


Auckland

by toxicdotaep (RacheTanz)



Category: John Dies at the End - David Wong
Genre: Alcohol, Angst with a Happy Ending, BATMANTIS???? appears, Blood/Injury, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Nonbinary Character, Polyamory, Road Trips, There's Only One Bed Trope only not quite exactly, by lgbt+ for lgbt+, canon-divergent AU, drug mention, drug/alcohol abuse tw, ghosts and monsters and all the usual shit you get in canon, self-harm tw, slowburn john/dave/amy, sort-of sexuality crisis a little bit, the ending is worth it ! i promise !!, undefined mental illness(es)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:46:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 40,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26012833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RacheTanz/pseuds/toxicdotaep
Summary: Canon-divergent AU (splits after the end of John Dies at the End, before This Book is Full of Spiders) where John and Dave take monster-hunting on the road following some mild personal catastrophes in Undisclosed.Dave/Amy with slowburn John/Dave/AmyTW: blood/injury, self-harm, drug/alcohol use/abuse.
Relationships: Amy Sullivan/David Wong, John Cheese/Amy Sullivan/David Wong
Comments: 13
Kudos: 14





	1. Meet Me On The Roof

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a note, in case anyone gets Confused; this AU starts in media res and I promise the backstory and such will Unfold as it goes, pls b patient ty  
> additionally, while overall this is p dark, i'll be putting specific content warnings in the notes for each chapter that warrants them. this one doesnt

John was roused in the middle of the night by the sound of Dave’s phone ringing. The bed shifted as Dave leaned over to pick up his phone off the nightstand, and he heard Dave answer it with a “Hey, babe.” _Amy_. John’s eyes slid shut again. 

“Hi, David!” Amy chirped through the phone. “How are you?” 

He heaved a quiet sigh as he sat up. “A little tired. You?” 

“Did I wake you up?” 

“No,” he lied, in a very groggy voice, “I couldn’t sleep.” 

“Me neither. What’s keeping _you_ up?” 

He searched for something plausible. “We’ve sat so long in the car my ass literally aches.” 

She laughed. “Ohhh, I _hate_ that.” 

“Right? The worst.” Dave smiled to himself. “I miss you.” 

“I miss you too. I can tag along on my winter break, right?” 

“ _Amy_ ,” he started, fully prepared to give her his usual _you deserve a normal life, please don’t try to involve yourself in this, it’s too dangerous and I love you too much, remember the story about the woodchuck and the shit?_ spiel, but she interrupted brightly. 

“Think of it like it’s my Christmas present!” 

He faltered, guilt creeping up his spine. They barely had enough money to get snacks at the gas station for breakfast tomorrow. They weren’t saving up—they _couldn’t_ ; he’d never be able to buy her a Christmas present like this. “I… I’ll… I’ll think about it,” he managed hoarsely. 

Amy knew him well enough to know she’d (accidentally) struck a chord there. “I love you,” she said kindly, in that tone he knew meant she wanted to kiss him, “and I can’t wait to see you again.” 

“I love you too.” He was almost too tired to sound like he meant it, but he really did. He was lucky enough that she knew it.

She decided to change the subject if only to avoid further pain. “Is John there? Can I talk to him?” 

“John? No, uh,” Dave turned to look behind him, “I think he’s asleep.” But John had woken again at the sound of his name, and he made a noise, a grunt in the back of his throat. “Oh, no, he’s awake actually.” John lifted a hand and felt Dave press the phone into it. “Here, man.” 

John pulled the phone to his ear. “Hiiiiiii Amyyyyy,” he mumbled cheerfully into the phone. 

“Hey, John!” He could hear her smile. “How are you? How’s monster-hunting been going?” 

“Good, good. We’re actually—” John yawned— “I actually got us set up to investigate this haunted-ass ship tomorrow. Technically later today. It’s gonna be great.” The bed shifted again and he heard shuffling footsteps as Dave walked to the bathroom. 

“Ooh, cool! Take lots of pictures for me. I wish I could be there, but I have a test tomorrow. And you guys are, you know, hours’n’hours away.” 

“Hah, yeah.” He scratched his nose. “Hang on, why are you up this late if you have a test?” 

“I couldn’t sleep.” 

He mulled that over, gears in his brain turning sleepily. “You okay?” 

“Just a little nervous, that’s all. I called to get my mind off it, but I think that didn’t work.” 

“Mmh, I’m sorry.” He rolled onto his back. The bathroom door opened again and the light/fan clicked off. “If it’s any consolation, I’m sure you’ll totally kill that test, man.”

“Thanks, John. Is David still there?” 

“Mhm. Wanna talk to him again?” 

“Yes please.” 

“A’ight. Nighty-night, girl, I’ll talk to ya later!” He pushed the phone back to Dave, then rolled over and knocked out again. 

“Hey, Amy.” 

“Hey again. I gotta go but I wanted to say _I love you_ an extra time.”

He smiled. “I love you too. Good night, baby. Sleep well.” 

“You too! Kisses!” 

Dave snickered a little, but only out of embarrassment. “…Kisses,” he responded, and she hung up. John giggled at him as he lowered the phone from his cheek. “Shut up, John.” 

“That’s _cu-ute_ ,” he mocked sleepily. Dave smacked his shoulder and he laughed again. 

“Fuck off and go to sleep.” Dave settled in again, dropping his phone on the nightstand.

* * *

They got up bright and early the next morning, mostly because the motel’s curtains were unbearably thin and the sun rose right into the window. Dave got up first, taking a quick shower before shaking John awake. They pooled what little funds remained from their last lucky break and calculated that they could afford two coffees and a bag of trail mix from the 7/11 across the street if John hid the trail mix in his shirt. Dave always felt shitty about shoplifting but they couldn’t function on so little sleep without caffeine and they needed _something_ to eat. 

They split the trail mix on the way over to the shipyard. Dave drove and John briefed him on what he could remember from the phone call he had with the guy three days ago. Dave tried to let it sink in but it didn’t really; it hardly mattered, though, as John was mostly talking just to hear his own voice, as per usual. It was better than the sound of the local radio stations, so Dave didn’t care. 

Dave parked the car in the conveniently-free parking lot the shipyard had. Though calling it a parking lot was honestly a bit generous; it was just a tiny amount of pavement with some very narrow parking spots haphazardly spray painted on it. The moment they stepped out of the car, Dave wrinkled his nose. “Christ. What’s that smell?” It was like the most watered-down shit he’d ever smelled. Like a single small turd in a bathtub’s worth of water left to fester.

“Shipyards.” John supplied, slamming his door shut.

“Huh?”

He shrugged and made a little “I dunno” noise, then added, “They always smell like this.” Dave grimaced, then adjusted his face back to its typical permagrumpy expression as they approached the nearest person. John, as per usual, did the talking: “Hey, do you know where Captain Mark is?” 

The guy turned and eyed them suspiciously. “No.” 

“Too bad. Can we look for him?” John smiled affably, hoping to counterbalance Dave’s general unfriendliness. 

“Sure,” the man had that I-blatantly-don’t-care tone to his voice that usually meant they could do whatever they wanted so long as they didn’t rock the boat too much. This was something John pointed out to Dave later, earning a withering glare for the terrible pun. 

They walked around the shipyard for a hot minute, asking random people the same question until, eventually, they ran into Captain Mark, a wiry and tired-looking man who smiled in relief and exclaimed, “Oh, you must be The Supernaturalists!” 

Dave tried not to grimace again. 

“Yep!” John extended a hand. “Name’s John. John Cheese. This here’s my partner, David Wong. He’s meaner than he looks, but only to ghosts and shit, so don’t worry. _So_ …run your problem by us again?” 

Captain Mark did, indeed, run his problem by them again, which turned out to be several problems that sounded to them like several entities fucking around inside his big-ass ship. He kept losing shiphands to the general terror, as they’d get the hell off the boat however they could and never come back. It sounded like a _lot_ , actually, and John and Dave made that well-known. After a bit of bartering they were promised $500 to each of them and—the real score—one meal per day _and_ the ability to sleep on the ship, which they marketed as 24-hour service but the guy probably knew was just them getting room and board out of him. They also demanded the ship be emptied of all deckhands, mostly because they really didn’t want anyone eavesdropping on them lest this turn out to actually be several cakewalks but also (a little bit) because getting someone caught in the crossfire here probably wouldn’t be good for continued business. 

The boat was huge, smelled funny, and made creaking and groaning noises almost constantly. Dave couldn’t have been more uncomfortable if he was trying to keep his composure with an underpantsful of small ants that he wouldn’t be able to rid himself of until hours after they appeared. He jumped at every slight noise, certain that _that_ one was the sound of some kind of monster appearing, and he knew John was similarly unnerved (albeit likely much less so) by the fact he didn’t tease Dave for his anxiety. They walked along the halls, flashlights in hand, weapons in their other hands, sticking close together in case something was about to jump out of a dark corner at them. 

“How long do you think it’d take to sweep the whole place?” Dave piped up in a quiet mutter that still echoed disturbingly. 

“I don’t know. Days? Weeks? How long do you think we can stretch this out?” John whispered back. That, too, echoed. 

“Normally I’d try for as long as possible, if only to get someplace to sleep out of it, but dude, this place freaks me the hell out.” 

“Yeah, me too.” John sighed. “How about… three days? Maybe four? We’ve got ’em giving us dinner every day. That’s pretty good, right?” 

Dave nodded. “Evens out. Wait, what was that?” They both held their breath for a moment, straining their ears. They heard nothing but yet another ominous creak. “Um. Nevermind.” 

The moment the word left his mouth, something slammed into him, knocking him backwards with a loud yelp, and he dropped everything. He felt sharp teeth graze his neck and he instinctively slammed his hands into the creature’s jaws, holding it back, unintentionally jamming his thumbs down its throat. Fortunately, it seemed not to have a gag reflex, but the sensation was uniquely unpleasant. John yelled his name, and then abruptly the creature was yanked off him due to a well-placed kick from John. Dave scrambled backwards, hand flailing around to find his flashlight again, and got to his feet, pointing it at the thing. 

It looked like the most fucked-up dog he’d ever seen. Its body was too long, it laid too low to the ground, its front legs were too humanoid, like arms, and its eyes were bright yellow. “Jesus, fuck, what is that?” He breathed, stepping closer to John as it scrambled to its feet, disoriented.

“Fuck if I know,” John lifted The Bible Belter. Its eyes locked to that and it hissed like a cat. 

What followed was by John’s perception the most badass fight ever, because to him every fight was the most badass fight ever, but to Dave was just two idiots yelling and flailing in the dark trying to hit a creature the size of a small labrador. The truth lay somewhere between their perceptions, but the important part was that the creature eventually was consumed by some kind of holy fire started by The Bible Belter’s numerous impacts on its skin. It crumpled and withered into charred bones, then disintegrated into dust that blew away on an imaginary breeze. 

Dave finally had the time to point his flashlight to the ground and look around for the weapon he’d dropped when he got jumped. He bent down and snagged it off the floor. “You good?” John asked. 

“Yeah.” Dave shrugged it off. “Well, that’s one down.” 

They kept walking. It was still absolutely pitch-dark in there, but they managed. The floor felt less creepy, somehow, though it still creaked quite a lot. John proclaimed creaking was just something boats did, like old houses, and Dave was actually fairly sure he was right for once. Eventually they reached a doorway to a stairwell, and they paused for a second, trying to work out what to do next, when John did as he usually does—he got distracted and interrupted himself.

“Oh, hey,” John messed with something on the wall, and with a soft ‘click,’ lights flicked on throughout the whole section they’d just gone through. “There _were_ lights, we just didn’t find the switch!” 

“Oh. Huh.” Dave blinked, feeling a little bit stupid. He turned off his flashlight and stuffed it into his pocket. “Well, hey. Should make the rest of this shit easier, right?” 

“Mhm.” John pocketed his own flashlight, twirling The Bible Belter aimlessly. “Let’s go up a floor.” 

* * *

They spent the rest of the day wandering around the ship until eventually navigating to the crew’s sleeping quarters. The boat wasn’t all that big, despite being some sort of cargo ship, but it did have layers to it, meaning they had to trek the same small-ish amount of space around three times over. They even went through the cramped engine room, which Dave hated but luckily wasn’t reported to be haunted. A majority of it was pretty empty, as they’d cleared it out when docking and they weren’t loading whatever new shipment they were going to be ferrying until the ship was declared de-ghosted. This was great for maneuverability but they had to agree, it didn’t help the boat be any less creepy.

The quarters they were going to sleep in weren’t any less unnerving. They’d been told to sleep in this one, specifically, because no crew member weathered more than one night at a time there—it was supposedly so fucked-up they’d draw straws to see who _had_ to sleep in it. This did not make Dave feel very inclined to sleep in it. John, however, was _fucking stoked_ , as he always was with the weird shit, and he settled in almost immediately. Dave knew he had to sleep in order for the stupid ghosts to show up, but he always had trouble with that. He tossed and turned for what felt like days but was probably only a few hours before eventually passing out. 

An unknown amount of time later, Dave snapped awake to a weight on his chest. He couldn’t see, like there was something being held over his face, and he couldn’t move, which was more concerning. Sleep paralysis. This shit sucked _and_ it meant he couldn’t alert John that the weird shit was happening, but at the very least, it was kind of a weak play. The ghosts-or-whatever that pulled this shit couldn’t usually _hurt_ him, though they could look freaky enough to show back up in nightmares. He was glad his eyelids apparently wouldn’t open.

There was a thump and then suddenly the weight lifted and he heard John yell, “Get the fuck off my bro, shitbird!” 

At that point Dave realized there _was_ something over his head—the blanket. He flailed, ripped it off his head, and sucked in a lungful of surprisingly-much-cooler air. John was currently smacking the shit out of some blurry dark entity with his pillow, yelling, and Dave’s head immediately snapped to the table between their beds. He snagged the holy-water-filled water pistol and started spraying the shit out of the thing John was walloping. It let out a horrific shriek, melting into steam and howling all the while, dissipating entirely and leaving behind a little scorch mark on the floor. John smacked the floor a few more times just for good measure, then straightened up, panting. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Dave was a little too groggy to be so affected by what had just happened. 

“Hey, it left behind some damage for us. Now we don’t have to wreck this room quite as much when we leave.” John chucked his pillow back on his bed, wiping off his forehead with the hem of his shirt. “Nice.” 

“Mhm.” Dave put the gun back where it was and rolled over, settled back into bed. John just watched him knock out again, almost baffled by Dave’s capacity to sleep right after something traumatic like that. He wondered for a moment if Dave had even been awake when he started shooting the water pistol, and if he’d remember what happened in the morning or if John would have to tell him about it. He kinda hoped Dave wouldn’t remember, because then he could explain how awesome and badass he was for springing into action the moment his “Dave is in danger” spidey-senses activated and woke him up. One of these days Dave would recognize him for the knight in shining armor he was. 

* * *

After that first night, the atmosphere of the ship felt far less creepy. They weren’t sure if it was because they’d dealt with two of the maybe-six-maybe-seven-who-knows entities that were hanging around or if they’d just gotten used to it, but they didn’t much care, either. 

“Dude, this is sick,” John grinned, running his hands over the ship’s helm. 

“Hey, don’t fuck anything up,” Dave glanced over. “We don’t know what this shit even is.”

“I’m not gonna fuck anything up,” John said defensively, pulling his hand back. 

The captain himself had been dealing with some of the bullshit front-and-center all by himself up here. According to him, his radio would go on the fritz randomly, and start spewing out some weird, crude “vulgar language” (his words). He’d thought it was someone just spouting bullshit into a radio nearby, but it happened even when he _knew_ he was the only ship around. On top of that, his radar display screens would pull some weird shit too, lines and dots rearranging to form a face watching him. For hours on end. It sounded exactly like the sort of shit that had been plaguing Dave’s TV, and if it was, then it would definitely happen again with him in the room, so they were going to spend a few hours during the times of day Captain Mark reported it happening the most often, in hopes if it showed up they could find a way to make it fuck off. They didn’t exactly have a lot of hope for that, as the only solution they came up with for Dave’s TV was screaming and John pressing his nuts to the screen, and that didn’t even work. (Dave had already informed John he was to keep his pants **on** for this, barring extreme emergencies such as his pants catching on fire _and_ _no other circumstances_.) 

John fiddled with the radio curiously as Dave stared down at the radar display. It was off, but that never stopped Them before, so he was still going to watch it. “This thing gets, like, no stations,” John commented.

“It’s not a radio like that, it’s a, uh, a boat radio. Like a walkie-talkie. It’s how they talk to each other.” Dave glanced over. “Look around, there should be a little microphone near it.” The moment he said that, he realized he was going to regret it. John’s eyes lit up as he snagged the microphone and immediately began inspecting it to see how to turn it on. “John. _John_. John? John, don’t make these people hate us.” 

John was ignoring him. He’d figured out how to turn on the microphone. 

“John, _please—_ ”

“HELLoooo sailors and mermaids and shitbirrrrrds do you read me? This is Captain Turbocock and—”

Dave snatched the microphone out of his hand and smacked at his arm until he backed up far enough away from the radio setup that Dave felt he could put the microphone back without John picking it back up again. John snickered the whole time, ending up leaning against some other equipment. “Man, you should’ve seen your face.” 

“Shut up, dude.” But Dave wasn’t really annoyed. “Come on, let’s start trying to figure this shit out.” 

The radio clicked and shot out a burst of static, drawing their attention. They both froze and stared down for a moment. It spluttered and made random sounds for a time before eventually seeming to get its shit together enough to say, “We read you, Captain Tinycock.” 

This, of course, immediately incensed John. “That’s _not_ what I said.” 

“It hardly even needs saying, does it? Huh? Shithead.” 

“Fuck you, I have—”

“The tiniest dick we’ve ever seen.” 

John turned to Dave, getting exasperated. “Dave, _you_ tell ’em I’ve got a huge dick.” 

“I’m… not going to do that.” Dave replied uncomfortably. “We don’t have to engage with it, just find some way to make it fuck off.” 

“We will _never_ leave, you stupid jackasses. You turd-gargling—” 

“If it’s just some kinda conduit, can't we, I dunno, block out that frequency?” John mused. “I mean, it _is_ just a channel, yeah? That’s what was up with your TV, that’s why you saw the, um, the thing with the worms and the hands.” 

“Hey! Don’t talk over—” 

“Mhm.” Dave thought carefully. They really hadn’t tried to ‘block’ the signal to Dave’s TV, though, mostly because it was his TV and he’d rather it be able to show him sports events and shitty reality shows than be entirely demon-free. He wasn’t sure how that would even work, if they weren’t operating on any frequency. “How would we do that, though?” 

“I dunno. Ghost-blocking shit?”

Static snapped loudly. “Fuck you!”

Dave smacked the radio. It wouldn’t help, but it made him feel a little better. “What, you wanna carve a fuckin’ pentagram on it? A cross?” 

“Like that would work. You two fucking re—” 

John made a contemplative noise. “It’s worth trying, right?” He started to pace a bit. 

Dave thought to check the radar screen again, but it wasn’t doing anything exciting, which was probably good. One problem at a time. He completely tuned out the radio voice even as it kept screeching obscenities at them, choosing instead to mull over what they could do. “You know how to dismantle one of these things?” 

“Nnnnnope. Why?” John gave him a puzzled look. 

“I think if we could carve that shit on the inside it’d be better insurance against this shit happening again. Y’know, less of a chance it gets defaced somehow.” 

“Oh, makes sense.” John glanced at the radio again. “You hearing the same shit from it that I’m hearing?” 

Dave listened for a second. The thing was yelling about his mother. “Same old shit about how my mom’s in a nuthouse and I oughta be there too. Why?” 

John looked perturbed for a second, then said, “No reason. You think we can take it apart?” 

“Probably not easily. You got a toolkit?” 

“No.” 

“Shit. Uhhh. Well… any other ideas?” 

“We could smash it!” John grinned. 

Dave gave him a tired look. “Yeah, and what if when he buys new shit, the same stupid fuckery starts happening all over again?” 

“Ooh, good point,” John scrunched up his face in thought. “Hey, wait, maybe we don’t have to mess with the radio at all.” 

“Huh?” 

John turned to the radio. “Hey, why the hell are you here?” 

The radio positively hissed at them. “Don’t presume to ask questions of us, you filthy fucking maggot. You f—”

“I just don’t get what’s important about this ship or whatever. Or is it the captain?” John interrupted.

“These are some unusually selfless questions coming from _you_.” They got the distinct impression that whatever or whoever was inside the radio was sneering. “Two of the most self-centered bastard assholes to exist, and you found each other, huh? How sweet. How romantic.” 

“So, what, this is about _us_?” Dave was fairly sure he’d caught on to where John was heading with this. Sometimes these things could be talked in circles enough that they’d fuck off solely out of frustration.

“Why don’t you use that rotten cabbage you call a brain for a second, and think? Were you called here because we’re here, or are we here because you’d be called here?”

A silence passed far more deafening than any silence before then. John and Dave exchanged a confused glance before John said, “What the hell does that mean?” 

“You’re the root of all your problems. The fat fucker already knows that, don’t you, eh, lardass? _You_ know that everything bad in your life is your own damned fault. But you, Tinycock, you’re still in denial—” 

“So, what, you were lying in wait? Seems kinda stupid. Dude could’ve easily called Marconi,” John replied dismissively. “Unless you were just counting on us being the only people doing this in his budget.” 

“He could have, but he called _you_.” 

Dave was starting to wonder if there was a point to any of this. “Okay, so, fucking what? You camped out in this guy’s radio just to fuck with us months later? Isn’t that a huge ass waste of time?” 

“You presume anything truly takes time for us.” 

Dave rolled his eyes. “Sure, whatever.” He was getting really fucking tired of this. He looked at the radar again, and almost jumped when he saw a face staring at him. 

It grinned and the mouth moved as the voice on the radio sneered, “You’re just so fucking lazy you won’t even try to figure anything out—” Dave then got curious. He stuck his hand out and covered the radar screen, spreading his hand flat over it. “Hey, what are—No, stop—!” The sound cut off with a choking noise. Dave raised an eyebrow, not believing the thing was actually being choked until it kept going and, eventually, died out. He looked at John. John looked at him, wide-eyed. The radio hissed and buzzed with static, but that, too, faded, into a much-more-deafening silence.

Dave was the first to speak. “You’ve got to be shitting me.” He pulled his hand off the radar and looked down. It was normal again. The radio stayed silent. 

John seemed to come back to his senses. He shrugged. “Well, hey. Easy fix, right?”

“Guess so.” Dave still eyed both the radar and the radio with a suspicious look. He was definitely going to come back later to double-check it, but for now, it was at least dormant. “Fine. What was the other weird shit that guy told us about?” 

* * *

They walked along a hall in the upper decks, just below the surface, where deckhands were reportedly getting their shoulders nabbed or their shirts tugged-at. John and Dave meandered back and forth, hoping it would happen to either one of them, pretty sure they were dealing with a child spirit, which they typically already knew how to deal with. They took two laps in silence before Dave decided to come up with something to say because he really couldn’t take just the noise of their footsteps echoing around. It was creeping him out. 

“Why’d you ask me what I was hearing?” Dave asked after a moment. 

John had a profoundly caught look on his face for a split second before he answered, “I was trying to figure out if it was, like, in our heads, or actually something communicating through that thing. If we both heard the same thing, it’d be, I don’t know, a demon or something stuck in the radio, but since we didn’t, we know it was just a channel for Them, like the TV was.” 

“Well, what the hell were _you_ hearing?” 

“You don’t wanna know,” John replied quickly. His tone was enough to convince Dave not to press further. They fell into silence again. After another lap, John said, “I think maybe this isn’t working.”

“Yeah, how long have we been at this?” They both paused, turning to face each other, as John fished his phone out of his pocket. 

“Uuuhh, half an hour? Maybe more? I didn’t check when we started.” 

Dave hummed. “And this one isn’t a 9-to-5 kinda ghost?” 

“Nah, they said that shit happened all the time…Maybe the ghost’ll only show up if it’s just one guy walking,” John mused. 

“Alright, then, you walk and I’ll keep watch,” Dave replied. No way was he going to subject himself to Ghost Touches. He barely tolerated living people touching him, and at least he could often see that shit coming. 

John nodded, already that sparkle of enthusiasm lighting up his eyes. He got some kind of weird fun thrill out of the ghost shit. Dave would never understand it, but it didn’t get in the way of their work, so he didn’t care, either. He walked to the end of the hall, flashlight in hand, then walked around the corner. Sometimes the ghosts were stupid or had a narrow field of vision or some other shit; if Dave stationed himself out of sight, he could still keep an eye on John and maybe even catch a glimpse of the ghost. He stuck a thumbs-up around the corner, then heard footsteps start up again. Dave peered around the corner, watching John walk further away, keeping an eye out for any ghostly activity. He didn’t see anything and the hallway didn’t even feel all that ominous. John walked back and forth in a variety of nonchalant swaggers, even resorting to whistling tunelessly to try and project an air of calm, but still, nothing happened. Eventually he walked closer to the corner and shined his light right in Dave’s face. Hilariously it was _then_ that he jumped, but before Dave could ask if he felt something, he burst out laughing. “Dude, I thought _you_ were a ghost for a second!” 

Dave rolled his eyes at him. “So, nothing?” 

“Nope! Maybe _you_ should try—”

“No thanks.” 

John quirked an eyebrow, giving him a gap-toothed grin. “What, you _scared_?”

Dave straightened up with a glare. “No, John, I’m not fucking scared.” 

“Then why not?” He countered in a falsely sweet tone, tilting his head to one side. “You know They like to fuck around with people. Maybe I was just too eager. We need your measured apathy! Unless… you’re actually scared.” 

Dave could kill him, sometimes. “Shut up. Stay here.” 

And so they swapped places, with Dave beginning to trek down the hall and John standing at the corner behind him. Dave was not afraid, but he was very tense with the anticipation of what could happen. Nobody reported getting scratched or anything, but he was, by this point in time, well fucking aware that he was like catnip for this weird shit, and it wouldn’t be the first time the weird shit escalated while they were there. The ghosts that scratched were the most annoying. It was like wrangling a cat in a bath, if the cat were invisible and also capable of telling you it’d fuck your mom. 

On his second time back through the hall, he felt something take a fistful of his shirt and yank down on it. He whirled around and grabbed at the air where he’d felt it, but there wasn’t anything there. Cursing under his breath, he swung the flashlight around. “Hey, where are you?” He snapped, eyes searching the dark. “Come on. We’re not gonna hurt you.” He kept looking, and added under his breath, “Much.” 

Dave heard something step up beside him and he whirled around, but it was just John, who snickered at him. “Dude, chill.” 

“Did you see anything?” 

“Kinda like a disembodied arm,” John replied. “I don’t think it’s a full-body one. Maybe we could just burn some of that funny-smelling wood—”

“Sage.”

“—and it’ll go away.” 

“You’d think a stoner of all people would know about sage.” 

“I’m more of a scented-candles kinda guy than an incense guy.” 

Dave nodded. “I think I left our sage bundle in the room.” 

* * *

After they’d waved the burnt sage around the hallway in their usual ritual (including John chanting “fuck off” in what was _supposed_ to be an ominous tone) they decided to head back to their room again to check John’s notepad, where he’d scribbled down what they were supposed to be looking for. When they checked it, though, they’d had pretty much everything checked off the list, giving them tomorrow to double-check and an extra day to sleep it off, so they decided to turn in early after the captain gave them Taco Bell for dinner and just use tomorrow to check everything again. 

The night passed uneventfully. They woke up somewhat-early, not by choice, but by the sound of something on the floor above them falling to the ground. A loud clang, metal on metal. Dave shot upright in bed immediately, almost standing up before he processed that he’d woken up. John was up, too, a little more groggy than Dave but definitely awake. 

“Dijooerethat?” Dave stumbled over his words.

“Whuh?” John rubbed his face. 

“Did you hear that?” Dave tried again, a little more coherently this time. 

“Sounded like something falling over.” John sat up. 

Dave was already out of bed, picking up the water pistol. He almost forgot to put his pants back on but then he realized he’d rather not be wandering around a boat in his underwear. In that time John woke up properly and reached under his bed for The Bible Belter. “You’ve seen this whole ship, dude. There’s nothing up there to fall over.” 

They left their room, headed for the stairs, keeping close together. Dave held the flashlight up and flicked it back and forth, warily looking out for… something. He wasn’t sure what, but something. John stayed close behind him, looking behind them occasionally. They reached the door to the stairs and, after a moment’s effort, opened it and began creeping up the staircase, still moving cautiously. They reached the floor above, and as Dave put his hand on the door they both heard a loud bang. Dave nearly jumped out of his skin, then ripped the door open in a mild panic, John at his heels. 

The hall ahead was empty. Dave swept the flashlight back and forth, eyes roving the darkness beyond it. Something metal glinted far off and he had just enough time to yell, “Look out!” Before backpedaling, deliberately knocking John over, and shielding him as a metal pipe slammed into the doorway behind them.

“You think that thing’s mad about the sage?” John asked. 

“No idea.” Dave scrambled to his feet and lifted the pistol, leveling it at where the pipe came from, every muscle tense and ready to spring out of the way again. He saw the metal glint again and said, “Get ready to duck.” 

“How can you—” John threw himself flat to the floor beside Dave as another pipe soared over their heads— “see that shit coming?” 

“Can’t you?” Dave countered, confused. He jumped to his feet again and started jogging toward the source of the pipes. To Dave’s eyes the gleam of the flashlight’s beam on the metal as whatever-it-was prepared to chuck some shit at them was like a light being flicked on and off really quickly—like a secret signal in a spy movie. A quick flash that’s actually pretty hard to miss. John, however, couldn’t see shit, and not just because he wasn’t in control of the flashlight. 

There was a shadowy figure, not quite a shadowman, but not a real person either, standing against the far wall, ripping pipes from the wall and throwing them. Dave had no idea what the pipes were for, but he hoped none of them were plumbing pipes. As the thing was working on tearing another pipe from the wall, Dave started shooting the pistol, pointing the light right at the thing so John could see it. It hissed, form wobbling slightly, but the stream of water was just too weak overall to do anything to it; it didn’t even look back at Dave (as far as he could tell, anyways) as it rended another pipe from the wall and swung it at him. 

He probably should have seen that coming, but he didn’t. The sound of a thick hollow pipe hitting a veritable wall of flesh is a unique one, and one Dave wished he wasn’t so familiar with. Chaos broke loose as Dave fell over backward, flashlight and gun skittering across the floor. He hit his head on the metal flooring and blacked out for a second. John, unphased by watching Dave get knocked down, swung The Bible Belter ferociously at the thing, yelling incoherently in rage. Dave came back to his senses, a little dizzy, and hauled himself upright in time to watch John literally beat the shadowy thing into the wall. He stopped swinging the bat when it pinged off a metal plate, backing up with a strong grip still on it, looking around. Dave fumbled for the gun and got unsteadily to his feet, the flashlight still on the ground. The ambient light from it was enough for him; he couldn’t see any sign of the figure but something still felt off. He turned around, eyes searching the darkness behind him, but he couldn’t see anything. 

“Where’d it go?” John panted.

“I don’t know.”

“Seemed like it phased through the wall—” John leaned forward like looking closer would help, and a bolt of paranoia shot through Dave, who nabbed him by the elbow suddenly, pulling him away from the wall. 

“Don’t get too close.” 

“What, you think it’s in the walls?” 

“Maybe.” Dave was starting to feel less dizzy. “I don’t think we killed it.” 

John kept close to him and they stood back-to-back, eyes peeled, until suddenly they heard the sound of pipes creaking and they immediately snapped to attention. A pipe seemed to rip itself off the wall and launch at them. They both ducked in time, and then John lunged at where the pipe had been, swinging and yelling like a madman. The bat glanced off the wall uselessly, and he cursed, backing up again.

What followed was a lot of the same, like a game of cat-and-mouse. They’d have to duck a pipe being chucked at their heads, then try to hit the thing supposedly before it could slip back into the wall. Dave knew he got it a couple times with the holy water pistol, because he heard it sizzling, but again it didn’t seem to have too much effect. John could never swing the bat quite fast enough to hit it, but then during one of the tense lulls in action he got an idea. “How thick are the walls here?” 

“Uh. I dunno?” 

“Thick as a person?” 

“Maybe. Why?” 

“I’ve got an idea.” 

“I hate hearing you say that. So much.” Dave examined the holy water pistol and grimaced. It was nearly empty. 

“What if I run around and like, find whatever room is on the other side of that wall? Then when it phases through again I can whack it on the back of the head. Maybe that’ll kill it.” John adjusted his grip. They put the conversation on hold for a moment as another pipe was wrenched free of the wall and sailed at them, clanging off the wall. 

“What if it follows you?” 

“Then I’ll go to a big open room or something. Make it come out of the wall to fuck with me. I can get it then.” 

Dave turned to give him a skeptical look but he was already jogging down the hall. “Wh—Wait, dumbass!” A pipe flew from the opposite wall and whacked into the wall right in front of him and he staggered back, cursing. John disappeared around the corner. It seemed like now that the thing had only one target to focus on, it wasn’t bothering with the hide-and-seek bullshit; pipes were ripped from the wall at an alarming speed, all hurtling towards Dave, and he felt very much like the last kid alive in a game of dodgeball, when the other team had a grudge against him. He hated that feeling. He felt a pipe glance off his shoulder and yelped in pain, really hoping John’s stupid fucking plan would actually work soon.

All at once, the pipes stopped. He froze, confused, then uncurled from the fetal position he’d taken on the floor. He heard something elsewhere clang, and realized, with a fair bit of horror, that the shadowy thing must have decided to focus on John now. 

“Fucking stupid ass decision, getting separated,” Dave growled under his breath as he scrambled to his feet and took off down the hall John had disappeared down. He tried to follow the echoey sounds of pipes clanging and John yelling, though it was pretty hard to do; after several wrong turns during which he’d gone from running to halfheartedly jogging to lazily power-walking, he finally figured out where the hell John had gone. He stumbled into a room that he guessed was near to the other side of the wall—the floorplan was so convoluted, he couldn’t easily tell—in time to see John topple over backward on a fallen pipe, Bible Belter tumbling from his hands. 

“Fucking ow,” John snarled, lifting a hand to the back of his head. He shuffled back as the shadowy figure advanced, another pipe in its hands, raised like it was about to hit him.

“Hey, dickface!” Dave yelled, sprinting forward. The sudden shout startled the both of them. Dave nabbed The Bible Belter off the floor and launched himself at the shadowy shape, swinging wildly. He felt it connect, repeatedly, and he walloped the thing until it dropped the pipe and sank into the floor beside John. He stood for a moment, shaky and wheezing, watching the ground to make sure it wouldn’t come back. It didn’t. John sat up halfway with a little grunt and Dave looked at him.

“You okay?” Dave extended a hand to him. 

John took it gratefully and Dave hauled him to his feet. “Yeah,” he sighed. “Thanks.”

“I think that’s that,” Dave commented. “Thing melted into the floor.” 

“If I were it, I probably would’ve run from the madman with a bat too. C’mon, it must be like, six a.m., we could still go back to sleep.” 

He didn’t have to tell Dave twice. 

* * *

“Glad _that’s_ over with,” Dave sighed, flopping down into the bed. “I’m gonna sleep until dinner tomorrow.” 

“Sounds good,” John answered from his own bed with a voice muffled by his pillow. He shifted a bit, pulling the pillow further underneath him, and sighed, satisfied with their good work. He’d like to sleep until dinner the next day, too, but he wasn’t even all that tired—he just didn’t want to be bored. He heard Dave toss and turn for a little bit before quieting down, and he fell asleep to the sound of Dave’s loud snoring.

John ended up waking up sometime around noon according to his phone’s clock. He couldn’t go back to sleep, so he did a quick lap around the boat, just to _really_ make sure the thing was properly de-ghosted, before coming back. He’d found some paper and a pencil while he was wandering around, though, so when he got back, he decided to use the little table between their beds as a desk and draw a bit. He doodled some random shit, he sketched Dave sleeping for a little while, he doodled some more, and eventually a few hours had passed and the page was full so he ditched drawing in favor of using his fingernails to scrape the paint off the pencil. By the time he’d gotten down to the eraser level, Dave woke up, very grudgingly. John could tell because at first he tried rolling over and bundling up more to go back to sleep, but he lay there for half an hour without snoring once; he gave up then and unbundled himself, sitting up. John by this point was perched on his bed across from him like a gargoyle, scraping the pencil down to the graphite with his fingernails. Dave stared blearily at the naked pencil, which John held up to him proudly, and asked, “Why?” 

“Got bored.” John shrugged and chucked it to the floor. “Wanna do one last ghost sweep before dinner?” 

“Mhm.” Dave rubbed his face and stood up, stretching, then picked up his pants from the floor and put them on. “Let’s go.”

The ship was still quiet, but they filled the silence with aimless chatter. Dave was almost energetic for once, or at least as close as he could get. They took their time, dawdling in the spots that had been haunted, before deciding it was time to go, given they didn’t find anything on the final ghost sweep. Before dinner they informed Captain Mark of their success. John made certain to let him know, though, that if he found anything else amiss, he should call them back. Captain Mark reluctantly agreed to, and paid them, then handed them their food (McDonald’s) and bid them adieu. They didn’t see him again.


	2. Want A Complete Re-Do

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> brief drug mention CW.

John settled into the driver’s seat. “Well, _that_ was great.” He turned to Dave with a grin. “Dude, we have _money_ again.” 

Dave couldn’t help but wonder how fast John was going to blow his share on stupid shit. “Yeah.” He was typically better at managing their money and usually ended up being the guy to pay for the rooms they rented and the food and gas. 

“I think I’ll set half aside for travel and shit,” John continued, like he always did. Dave knew he didn’t mean it and was already tuning him out. He was already silently running calculations on how long they could stretch out $500. If they were careful, it could last a while. But they weren’t always the best at being careful. 

He stared out the window as John drove, feeling tired despite sleeping so much earlier. Usually he had a tough time falling asleep, too busy trying to think through all of their problems and arrange a proper budget, and he only got a few hours at a time. Convenient that his body chose to finally crash at a time when they could crash without consequence. How many times already had John had to literally drag his fat ass out of bed to get going? There had been plenty of times he’d had to drive because Dave was too fatigued. At least he _chose_ to drive this time, so Dave didn’t have reason to feel guilty. He watched the world blur together into one orange-and-grey impression and didn’t even realize he was falling asleep again as John chattered away.

* * *

Dave slowly woke to the feeling of his head vibrating against the car window. He’d slouched over too far while dozing, and now his forehead was pressed to the glass, leaving behind a little spot on it. He sat up with a grunt, rubbing his eyes, and glanced over to John, who was bobbing his head to the sound of some dumb song on the radio, eyes mostly on the road, smiling slightly. For a moment, in the late-evening sun, his hair looked golden. 

He ruined the picturesque moment by turning to Dave and saying, “Hey, man, I got a new case for us.” 

“Already?” Dave squinted in a mixture of suspicion and confusion. 

“Yeah! Just a bit more than a state over,” he started, and Dave wilted at the idea of that much travel, but John didn’t notice, continuing, “it’s this farmer who’s been losing his livestock to something he’s seen that, in his words, ‘ain’t no fuckin’ coy-yote.’ Sounds good, right?”

Dave grunted, looking back out the window. 

This really wasn’t how he’d expected things to pan out, but he had no one to blame but himself in the end. After Jen left, he’d struggled to keep going to work—why bother, right? Why _bother_ continuing to work to pay a mortgage on an empty house he didn’t even want to come back to? If the housing market in Undisclosed wasn’t absolute shit, he’d have sold it. It was John who pressed him to keep going to work at Wally’s just often enough to not get fired, but then after that winter… his motivation really went out the window. There’s something cathartic, he felt, in destroying yourself. If he ruined his own life, Amy would probably move on too, wouldn’t she? So he didn’t put up a fight when his shit started getting reclaimed and foreclosed on and it was only once he was fired _and_ getting kicked out of his house that he started to realize he’d fucked up. Granted, he fucked up on purpose, but it took him actually getting it to realize he didn’t want it. He wanted to keep living and having a warm place to come home to. 

Molly ran away a week before all of that happened. Dave wasn’t really sure how _that_ happened, other than realizing he probably should’ve gotten some kind of fence in his yard a while ago, but she had never done that before. The second he opened the back door to let her out when he’d woken up, she bolted, and just kept going. He was too groggy and confused to chase her and after a full three days of her not coming back he put up posters. No one found her, to his knowledge. In hindsight he had to wonder if she’d seen all of this shit coming and got out while she could.

Luckily—or unluckily, depending on how you looked at it—John’s house got ravaged by some kind of fire that he wouldn’t talk to Dave about (and Dave didn’t feel it was good to ask about). No details, nothing, just John turning up at Dave’s soon-to-not-be-his-anymore house with the words, “My house got torched. You wanna take monster hunting on the road with me?” 

Dave didn’t, but he could read between the lines to know John was really saying, “I’m leaving for probably forever, and I really, really want you with me when I go.” Dave had nothing left to stay for. So he packed everything from the shed into John’s trunk and backseat, packed a few sets of clothes in the space remaining (John had done so, too, in a duffel bag he apparently managed to rescue—it was singed on one side) and they took maybe an hour or two to get food and sort out lodgings. And then, they were on their way. It was fucking insane but so were they, so they didn’t question it. Dave called Amy while he was on the road to finally spill the beans on everything, in what felt to him like a last-ditch effort to convince her she should untie her anchor to him and just _go_ already, but he should have known her better by then. She said she was sorry he was losing his house and that he’d lost his job, but she was happy he would have something to do, and she wished him the best of luck, demanding he call more often so she knew he was safe. 

His life went completely ass-over-tits in less than a day and he was most shocked by still having her support. 

“Hey, you listening?” John’s voice cut through his foggy thoughts. 

“Huh? Oh, no. Sorry.” Dave turned his focus back to his best friend. “Run it by me again?”

John glanced over quickly, and Dave didn’t register the concern in his eyes. “I was saying, this farmer guy, he’ll let us stay with him for a week to find this Not-Coy-Yote—” 

“I think he meant coyote, John. He just has an accent.” 

John continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “—’cause he can’t pay us, but he’ll give us food and his spare room and he agreed to look over the car ’cause I told him it was making that funny squeak it does.”

“Oh. Good.” Dave tried to process for a moment. “Great. Yeah.” 

John’s eyes flicked to him yet again, and he said carefully, “You can probably keep sleeping until we get to a motel or something.” 

Dave was too tired and miserable to protest. “Alright.” 

* * *

When he woke again it was pitch-black dark out and John was shaking his shoulder. He snapped awake with a sharp inhale, disoriented for a moment—every now and then, he thought he’d just wake up in his bedroom again—until he remembered what his life was and immediately wanted to go back to sleep again. But John was talking, and whatever part of his brain processes audio finally kicked in as John was saying, “—can’t drive anymore, man, I’m gonna pass out.” 

They were pulled over on the side of the road, hazards on, and John was sitting on one knee in the seat, leaning over to reach Dave. “Mh, yeah, sure,” Dave croaked, rubbing his face, “I can take over. No problem.”

They swapped seats, and John fell asleep before Dave even got the car back on the highway. He kinda hated driving at night, but he was more awake, and they were on a completely empty stretch of road. He wasn’t tired enough to warrant suggesting they stayed pulled over and both slept, and besides, the faster they got to their destination, the faster they’d have something that at least vaguely resembled a bed. Dave turned the radio down lower—he’d gotten lucky, They hadn’t been fucking with songs lately, and he felt like he could actually enjoy music again—to avoid waking John, though he didn’t really need to, given John snored twice as loud as the radio had been playing and that sure as hell didn’t wake him. 

He must have slept hard if he missed that phone call John got with the farmer guy they were going to help. Either that or John had gotten the call way earlier and only elected to tell Dave after they did the whole mess with the boat. It was hard to tell, but Dave didn’t really care; his people skills were rusty at best, and John was the best smooth-talker Dave knew, which didn’t really amount to much, but still meant he was better than Dave. John handled most of the talking to people, until he started to get too ridiculous about something, at which point Dave would forcibly drag his head from the clouds back down to earth. It was a good balance, even if it often came off a bit clumsy to new people. 

John had scribbled some directions on a piece of paper in the notepad they kept tucked in the glove compartment for just that purpose. Dave clicked on the cabin light, then squinted at it, trying to read John’s weird shorthand chicken-scratch. Fortunately he’d known John long enough to be able to figure it out after a couple minutes. He tucked the notebook against the gearshift, turned the light off and kept driving, keeping an eye out for the exit he was supposed to take. 

The night was tranquil. It felt nice to be driving along on an empty road, hardly any other cars to worry about, nothing but infinite woodlands beside him and a further-infinite road ahead of him, seeming to stretch so far into the horizon it disappeared entirely, swallowed by the pitch-black sky. Out here the clouds covered the moon and stars, a swath of grey in varying shades. They’d be driving until early morning, he was sure, but he could manage that. He cracked the window down to figure out if it was cool enough outside for that, and he was pleasantly surprised to find it was, indeed, very nice out. He rolled his window all the way down, slinging one arm out it, relaxing as much as he was able. 

It really was a lovely evening out. He felt less shitty the longer the drive went on. Peaceful moments were pretty few-and-far-between for them at the moment, so he tried his best to appreciate them when they happened. It was late autumn, the trees starting to lose their leaves, the days still warm but the nights chilly. Despite that, Dave rolled down the window, slinging his arm out it, and looked to the sky. The roads were mostly empty. A quick glance to the dashboard told him it was almost five in the morning. No wonder John had been crashing; he didn’t even get to sleep as much as Dave did. Dave honestly liked driving at times like these, when he was the only guy out here. Nobody else to do something stupid that he’d have to account for. No one going slow as fuck for no reason. All he had to do was keep an eye out for roadkill or potential roadkill. Or monsters. Sometimes they picked moments when the two were totally alone to strike, probably because their stupid little universe was ruled by horror movie tropes. Tonight felt fine, though, and not the kind of fine Dave was often suspicious of. The kind of fine that really truly was. He drummed his fingers along the outside of the window, looking back to the road. 

They hadn’t been traveling long, but it was still probably more traveling than he’d done in a long, long time. He supposed that at least some part of this was inevitable; despite living in Undisclosed all his life, it never really felt particularly welcoming to him. Nothing did. Whether it be from the near-constant bullying and torment he’d always endured in school or the fact no parent he’d ever had in his life ever truly wanted to even be around him, he never set down roots anywhere, really. Not solid ones, anyways. 

But he had, at some point. He remembered the house. Buying it with Jen wasn’t something he remembered doing but he still did it. Was it really him if he couldn’t remember? Logically, yes, yes it was him (technicalities of ‘Monster Dave’ aside), because who the hell else would it be—he was missing time, that was all—but the memories, how that would have felt, were gone, weren’t capable of colouring his current perception. He’d woken up and felt it all too good to be true, and when Jen left he realized it kinda was. That wasn’t him. Even before he knew about all the fucked-up shit out there—before the Soy Sauce—that wasn’t him. He wondered what it was like, to have briefly been the Dave who felt like he really could have something. He supposed it didn’t matter now, anyways. At least he still had John and Amy, and something to do to fill the time. It all felt a bit desperate, though. Like a rat on a conveyor belt, trying to run fast enough to avoid a meatgrinder at the end of it. Maybe he could run for now, but when would he get tired? 

Dave suddenly didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts anymore, lest he start thinking of plowing the car into the fucking median. He turned the radio back up just a little, cautiously eyeing John. John kept snoring. He turned his focus back to the road and forced himself to just think about the song on the radio, repeating every word to himself in his brain like a little feedback loop to keep everything else quiet. The song fucking sucked, but served its purpose.

It worked til sunrise, by which point other cars had joined him on his journey southeast, so he had something else to pay attention to. John woke up a little past eight with a yawn and a stretch before he looked around and noticed he was still in the car. “Whoa, dude, did you drive all night?” 

Dave shrugged. “It wasn’t that long. Maybe seven hours. How’d you sleep?” 

John eyed him. Dave sounded dead inside. As if to compensate, John dialled his energy up to a ten. “Great! You can pull over and I can take over now. I’m ready to go.” 

“We should probably stop for food,” Dave noted. 

John grinned. “Hey, good idea. We can afford to actually like, eat at a restaurant now!” Much as he liked fast food, he wouldn’t protest something a little bit better. 

Dave, on the other hand, was planning more long-term, and he frowned. “We should still try to save money.” 

“Aw, c’mon,” John pleaded. “My treat?” 

Dave rolled his eyes. It was hardly ‘John’s treat’ when they were pooling money all of the time in order to afford things, but he didn’t say so. Truth be told, he’d kill for some shitty food from Denny’s. Garbagey comfort food. The thought made his stomach growl. “Oh, _alright_ ,” he relented. John clapped gleefully. 

That was how they ended up in a booth at Denny’s, both shoveling as much bacon and eggs and waffles in their pieholes as they possibly could, and it all tasted like the best thing they’d ever eaten. Even the shitty burnt coffee here was miles above the shitty burnt coffee they got from gas stations. It was glorious.

Dave tried not to think about the way this all started, for him, in a Denny’s. Sitting in that booth, one John across from him, a completely different but still the same John in his ear, on his phone, rambling nonsensically about monsters and shit in his apartment. It was a little dizzying to think back to how clueless and terrified he had been. These days he was still just as clueless, but a lot less terrified. Usually. Sometimes. At the very least, he was better at killing shit now. However, all of those thoughts paled in comparison to one very loud _holy shit, I forgot how awesome bacon is._

“I swear, I’d eat the plate if they let me.” John commented, sitting back with a sigh. Dave grunted in an echo of the sentiment, still shoving bacon in his mouth. John stared off aimlessly, sipping his coffee. “Shit’s fantastic.” 

Dave wasn’t sure Denny’s food—good as it was in comparison to their usual fare—really earned _that_ much praise, but he didn’t say so. Mostly because he was still busy eating it for a few moments longer; when he was done, though, he had to agree: it was pretty fantastic. He didn’t dwell on the fact it was only relatively fantastic, choosing instead to revel in how nice it felt, if only for a moment. “Man,” Dave sighed, shoving his plate aside. “I needed that.” 

“We both did!” John grinned. “That’s why I suggested it.” He leaned over, propping his head up with his hand, and looked out the window. Dave stared down at the table, then over at the syrup bottles, then off into the middle distance. He was so worn-out nothing felt real. 

He wasn’t sure how long they sat there, but eventually he felt there enough to focus on their own table again. “We should get on the road again soon,” Dave commented. John didn’t answer and Dave got the distinct impression neither of them wanted to. He wasn’t sure if he felt sorry more for himself or for John, but he didn’t dwell on it. 

“I’ll drive,” John finally said. “You should sleep.” 

“I’m not tired.” 

“Liar.” 

They both fell silent and then Dave laughed quietly. “Fine, yeah.” He was exhausted, actually, despite the caffeine. He just felt tired with a faster heartbeat. 

John set some money on the table, took a last swig from his coffee, then stood up and said, “Let’s go.”

* * *

The farmer had the thickest southern accent Dave had heard in his entire life. He talked like he only had ten teeth, and when he smiled Dave realized that was because he probably did have only ten teeth. But he had a nice little house with a spare room set aside for their use and he seemed quite relieved to see them when they pulled up his gravel-and-dirt driveway and stepped out John’s shitty secondhand Bronco. It soon became apparent why. 

“ _Jesus_ ,” John commented. Dave held his hand over his mouth and nose to keep from breathing in too much. The carcass before them had likely, at one point, been a cow, but _holy shit, did it not look like a cow anymore._

“Two or three ev’ry mornin’.” The farmer leaned on the shovel he’d brought out. “Ain’t gonna use th’meat. Somethin’ _unnatural_ ’bout all’a this.” He spat on the ground. “Devil meat.”

Dave was inclined to agree, in a way. It was definitely the work of _something_ fucked-up. 

John crossed his arms and shifted from foot to foot, uncomfortable. “Yeah,” he affirmed, taking a half-pace back from it, “yeah, I wouldn’t eat that, either.” It was already rotting, anyways, the meat around the edges pitch black. Dave wanted to get a look at it, wondering almost if it was traces of Soy Sauce, but it smelt so horrible he didn’t want to get close enough to really tell. They trudged back to the house, leaving the farmer to bury the dead cow. He only had the one shovel, and they needed to unpack. 

“The hell do you think would’ve done that?” John opened the trunk. 

“No fucking idea, man.” Dave nabbed the rifle with sulfur-infused bullets. It was the best combination-strongest-but-most-stable weapon they had. “We’re up against something big, though.”

“You think?” 

“Dude, it molded that cow like it was made out of Silly Putty. Yeah, it’s probably fuckin’ big.”

John nodded thoughtfully. “I think I oughta go into town, get some shit for us to use.” 

“Like what?” 

“Stuff.” John slammed the trunk shut again. Dave didn’t like how vague he was being, but he didn’t have a strong rebuttal. “I’ll be back soon.” 

“Alright.” Dave replied, stepping back. “I’ll… ask the guy for more information.” He didn’t want to do the talking, but he certainly could. 

John nodded, smiling almost like he was relieved. “Cool, cool. Good luck.”

With that, he was off. Dave went back to the house, set the rifle down in the spare room, then went to speak for their gracious host. He asked as many questions as he could think of, and gathered what felt like a full picture from it: the man’s cattle kept getting killed, seemingly at random, always ending up all fucked-up-looking and rotted, and he hadn’t seen or heard anything. It would happen even if he spent all night out there with them. It would happen even if he ushered them all into the big-ass barn he usually kept them in during winter. No other animals were harmed—the guy had some chickens, too, and a few herding dogs, as well as one old horse. They were all unharmed so far. Just cows. This distressed him greatly, as they were his main source of income, but it had only happened for a month so far—he called early. Eventually Dave ran out of questions to ask, ended the conversation as politely as he could, and went back to the spare room to mull it over. This was new territory, but so much of all of the bullshit they were handling was, so that didn’t really impress him much. He tried to figure out what the hell purpose mangling a cow like that could have and all he could come up with was either weird occult shit or a monster just fucking around and having its own sick, twisted fun. He hated both those options. 

The sun was sliding low on the horizon, and Dave was starting to get a little nervous that John wasn’t going to come back. He tried calling, but John didn’t pick up; the call was rejected after the second ring. Getting ignored was frustrating but he couldn’t do much about it, so he gave up. He knew if he persisted John would just turn off his phone, and that would be dangerous, so he just gave up instead.

He sat there quietly planning until he heard footsteps at the doorway. 

“Where’s yer friend gone?” 

Dave glanced up. “Uh. He said he was going into the nearest town for something we needed.” _Probably drugs._ “He’ll be back before nightfall.” 

The man nodded understandingly. “Awlright. Well, yew lemme know if’n yew need anythin’, ya’hear?” 

Dave nodded back, and the man walked stiffly down the hall. Dave felt bad for him. How shitty must it be to live a simple, already-difficult-ass life out here only for some kind of weird-ass monster to show up and not only totally throw you off your game, but destroy a chunk of your livelihood? Dude didn’t know what the hell was happening, and now he had to call two weirdos from some podunk town to deal with it. And, given how John was with other people’s food, they’d end up eating the poor farmer out of house and home here. Dave already felt guilty and none of that had even happened yet. 

Tires crunched on gravel, and he snapped to attention, hopeful. He shouldn’t have been. John stumbled in, nearly asleep on his feet, crashing hard for reasons Dave wasn’t sure about. He wouldn’t respond to Dave at all and just made a beeline for the bed. Dave knew John well enough to know when he was whacked-out on something, and tonight was, as he had expected, one of the many nights where John was out of his mind on whatever he’d gotten from the city. Dave didn’t have the energy to be disappointed anymore. He left John in the bed, deciding he’d just deal with this one on his own. 

“Ain’t yer buddy gonna come he’p yew out?” The farmer asked, brow furrowed in confusion as Dave walked past him toward the back door.

“Nah, he’s…” Dave glanced back, “sick. Uh, he gets, er, carsick. Real bad. He’ll be fine, he just drove too much today.”

The farmer nodded in a way that made Dave feel like he saw right through his bullshit but was too kind to call him on it. Dave didn’t really need to lie. The guy wasn’t an idiot, he’d be able to figure it out if he saw John at all, but that wasn’t Dave’s problem. Even if John wasn’t reliable tonight, Dave would be. He hefted the rifle and stepped off the back porch. Sweeping the property by himself was going to suck, but he’d do it. He clicked on the light strapped to the gun and began walking. 

The night was cool, a light breeze ruffling through the tall grass, and lightning bugs danced through the sky, like tiny stars hovering all around him. What he hoped was mud squelched under his shoes every now and then as he walked along. It was quiet beyond the sound of the livestock meandering about as they were wont to do; Dave contemplated just sticking around them, but decided he’d rather kill this thing in its damn nest, before it got the chance to get up and about and alert enough to kill him first. 

He wished he had John watching his back. He hated feeling like something could creep up behind him. He kept glancing back, and up, and down, trying to look in 360 degrees all at once, but he wasn’t any more anxious than usual. He wasn’t at the trigger-happy stage of paranoia yet. Which, given he was supposed to be protecting the dude’s livestock, was probably good. Last thing he needed was to wear the guy’s kindness out with one misplaced bullet. John being a goddamned trainwreck of a man was likely already straining his faith in them, and Dave couldn’t blame him. If he called two random motherfuckers he saw on the internet to fix a problem he was having and a pale blob of a human and his best friend, The Most Obvious Drug Addict Ever, arrived, he’d be rethinking his entire life choices for leading him up to this. Dave wasn’t unused to disappointing people, but he’d be damned if he didn’t try his best at this one thing, the one last thing he had left in life to do. 

Beyond the fields where the cattle were grazing were dense woods. There was a fence, a wood fence easily climbed-over by a human, and Dave examined it. It could be hopped-through by a small animal, or vaulted-over by a massive animal. So either he was dealing with something tiny but deadly, or huge but deadly, which didn’t sound like much, but did rule out the middle-ground. Maybe. Unless this thing could teleport like the wig monsters did. Or had the capacity to tear through the wood. He wasn’t about to check the whole perimeter to see if the guy had patched it recently and he’d forgotten to ask that question.

He walked into the forested area, on even higher alert now, hyper-aware of every sound. The bushes and the tree branches above all served as perfect hiding-places for a gigantic-or-tiny creature. Dave continued his trying-to-look-in-all-directions-at-once tactic, sweeping the gun barrel over every square inch he felt necessary. Despite all of his watchfulness, though, the thing still got the jump on him; he didn’t have time to process the strange sound of sudden shuffling footsteps before he felt claws rip into his skin, across his chest, as a weight tried to knock the gun out of his hand. He shouted, startled, and staggered back, flailing the gun in the hopes he’d smack the thing with its bulk. He heard footsteps crunching twigs, too many in an odd pattern that didn’t make sense, and then something slammed into his back, hard. Dave fell heavily to the ground, air whooshing from his lungs, and he was dazed for a moment until he felt something slash across his back. He cried out in pain and rolled over, struggling to get the rifle between him and the creature. The flashlight strapped to it illuminated the creature in strips as it moved, and he understood immediately why the farmer had said it “ain’t no fuckin’ coyote.” 

It was maybe about the size of one, but it had too many limbs, and two sets of slavering jaws that looked like they just couldn’t wait to get a taste of him. The skull divided into two skulls, straight down the middle it looked like, joined at the eye socket, and branching from one side of its neck was a disturbingly humanoid arm covered in scruffy black fur, a three-fingered paw of some kind at the end of it, holding scraps of Dave’s shirt between razor sharp talons. Dave shoved the rifle barrel in one of its mouths and squeezed the trigger. A thunderclap and an explosion of gore announced the departure of what Dave assumed to be half the thing’s brains, and it yelped, staggering backward with one set of jaws limp and shredded. The sulfuric powder in the bullet smoked and steamed, burning and eating away through the rest of its flesh, and Dave scrambled to his feet, still aiming the rifle at it. Despite missing half its goddamned head, it was still up and moving, and lunged at him again. He fired another round, ripping through its chest, but that one hand still slashed out at him and caught him on the upper arm. He yelled again, pain ripping through his whole arm, and then anger flared in him and he snapped the rifle to one side, whacking the Not-Coy-Yote right in the head with the butt of it. If John were here with him this wouldn’t be so damned hard. Maybe it wouldn’t’ve even knocked him down. He felt that fire flare to life in his chest again, the electric desire to just smash the fuck out of this thing with his bare hands racing through him, but he didn’t give into it. He backed up again to reload, breathing hard, then fired another round. This time the thing collapsed with a pained howl, the sulfur eating through it so much he could hear it sizzling like eggs on a hot skillet.

The thing was dead. It was definitely, surely dead, but he watched it melt into nothing just to make sure, still struggling to breathe. This shit was going to make his asthma flare up again, which he didn’t need right now, given his inhaler was in John’s car and also 90% empty anyways. He ached all over, and he was bleeding from fuck-knows-how-many scratches and scrapes and gouges, but it didn’t matter. The job was done. Hopefully, anyway. If there were any more, though, he’d know how to kill them. It wasn’t too terribly hard in the end, or at least, if he had someone else with him, it could’ve been easy. He turned around and walked stiff-legged back to the farm, vaulting over the fence with a lot of trouble this time. He probably looked like a wreck. He could feel blood trickling down his torso, soaking into the waistline of his pants, but he didn’t really care. Eventually the faint light in the distance coalesced into the farmhouse, where, after a few more minutes of walking, the farmer stepped into the back doorway and leaned against its frame, watching Dave approach. He stopped and wobbled a bit at the base of the porch steps, catching his breath for a second.

“It’s done,” Dave panted. The man eyed him up and down with that steely expression a guy who’d seen far too many people bloody and fucked-up during the course of his life always mastered by the fifth or sixth time, and he nodded with a grunt before he shuffled inside. Dave wearily climbed the porch steps after him. 

He stepped in the back door and the farmer handed him a wooden kit with the words “first aid” carved into it, clearly with a knife. “Thank you.” The man said. Dave nodded. He was too exhausted for words. 

He walked back to the room he and John were to share, expecting John to still be asleep, only to find John awake and pacing around energetically. His eyes snapped to Dave and he barely seemed to notice the blood. “There you are! What’s up, dude?” 

Dave pushed past him without answering, setting down the first aid kit. He sat down on the bed heavily, silent, and shrugged off his shirt. It was ruined, of course, if not by the tears then by the blood, but he’d probably still wear it anyways. He was running out of shirts. 

John tried again. “It really got you there, huh?” 

Dave didn’t answer. He picked up the little kit the farmer had so kindly given him and opened it to find a relatively modern sort of setup to it, just in a rather old-timey box. He started to clean up his wounds like John wasn’t even there. 

“Dude?” John’s tone grew worried. 

Dave finally spoke. “So how much did it cost?” 

“Huh?”

“Whatever you got. How much? How much money do you have left?” He poured a little peroxide on a rag and gingerly dragged it across a deep gash, grinding his teeth together to keep from yelling. 

John didn’t answer, but he was deathly still now. Dave didn’t look at him. He figured John’s silence meant it had been a lot, maybe all of it, and they were going to be struggling to get by yet again.

“I’m sorry.” 

“ _Are_ you?” Dave snapped, head whipping around to look at him finally. He felt that anger bubbling up inside him, a flame biting at his ribcage, and he watched John’s face change as he registered the rage in Dave’s eyes. 

John left the room and Dave finished patching himself up alone, returning the kit to the farmer with a heartfelt thank-you. He didn’t find John still in the house anyplace—not that he looked, but it was a small place—but the car was still out front, so he elected not to care and went to bed instead. 

* * *

Dave woke to John sitting at the foot of the bed, sometime in the early hours of the morning, when the sun was just rising. He looked over at him. John was staring at his own feet, slumped over with his hands clasped together, like he was deep in thought, but he turned to look at Dave a moment or two after Dave woke. The light from the window behind him lit up one of his eyes such that his iris looked almost silver with a ring of gold around the pupil, and the bridge of his nose cast a long (and slightly-lumpy) shadow across the other side of his face. His eyes were full of regret. 

There was a long pause that would’ve been uncomfortable if Dave wasn’t still incredibly sleepy. He groggily wondered if John had slept at all or if whatever he took meant he couldn’t, at least not after he’d crashed upon getting back. 

“I really am sorry,” he said softly. 

Dave sighed, flopping his head back on the pillow, staring at the opposite wall. “I know.” 

“You could’ve gotten _mauled_ and I—”

“Yeah. I know.” 

Silence settled again. This time John shifted, moving backward and swinging his legs up onto the bed, then crawled up behind Dave and laid down, pressing his back to Dave’s. They didn’t say anything else. It was a silent mutual apology. Dave fell asleep again.

The next morning, Dave explained to the farmer (and John) that he had indeed killed one weird-ass monster last night, but they’d like to still stay the full week to make sure that was the only one, or at least they would stay a few more days, and if nothing happened, they’d move on. He didn’t want to impose, but the guy ended up insisting they stay as long as they could, citing the need to protect his livestock and the fact he didn’t have the proper tools to dispatch another monster, but John and Dave did. And that was true; the sulfur bullets had clearly had an effect on it, and those weren’t exactly easy to come by.

Despite the apology, the air between John and Dave was still tense. Dave’s wounds—both metaphorical and physical—still ached and he was even more laconic than usual. But tensions slowly eased as the day went on, and dissolved entirely when John helped Dave re-dress the wounds that evening, after a shower.

“Man,” John breathed as he grimaced at one particularly deep gouge on Dave’s upper arm. “That thing did a fucking _number_ on you, didn’t it?” 

“Yeah,” Dave glanced away. He didn’t want to sound like a little bitch by saying he’d really wished John was there, but… 

As if he could read his mind, John commented, “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help.” His voice was sincere, and uncharacteristically quiet.

Dave shrugged. He didn’t want to admit he wasn’t exactly expecting that much of John anymore, so he just didn’t say anything. John carefully wrapped it up and helped deal with the others Dave couldn’t easily handle one-handed (or reach at all; there was a particularly unpleasant one on his back). Once that was done, Dave pulled on the torn-up bloodied shirt again and said, “The sulfuric bullets worked on it. Burned it.” 

John nodded, and hefted the rifle. “I think we still have that stink-bomb launcher in the trunk.” 

They did.

Armed with a rifle and a ridiculous prank gun, they headed back out into the woods. Even though Dave wasn’t pissed at John anymore, he still didn’t have much to say to him. It would take a while to scrub that sort-of-disappointed feeling away, and John knew it. He wasn’t trying to coax Dave into talking, though whether that be so they could hear or because he knew better than to try was uncertain. 

They were out until dawn, and found nothing. They couldn’t even find the smouldering lump that had been the thing Dave fought. When they came back to the farm at around eight in the morning, the farmer informed them his cattle had all made it through the night. The next two nights went by much the same, but that fourth night was when shit hit the fan yet again. 

The morning of their third day, despite finding nothing that night, one of the cattle had been mauled, just as the farmer had reported to have happened earlier: gutted, with its skeleton sickeningly rearranged. They were all dismayed by that. There _was_ more than one of those bastard creatures out there. The farmer guessed only one, though, as there was only one cow killed throughout the whole night. John and Dave redoubled their efforts that same evening. 

This time, John was more inclined to try starting a conversation. “You said it had one little hand?”

“Yeah,” Dave replied. “Three claws. That’s what fucked up my back and arm, I think.” 

“Damn.” 

“Yeah.” 

Silence settled again. Cicadas chirped, lightning bugs danced around their heads, and John looked like he was thinking. Dave ignored it in favour of eyeing every tree they passed. Despite his wariness, though, it was John’s weird sixth sense that picked up on danger first. “Look out!” John sprang back and shouted for seemingly no reason, loud enough and sudden enough to make Dave jump back as well. They both yelped as something slammed into the ground in front of them, right where they’d just been. John stumbled backward and instinctively pulled the trigger, but the gun choked. 

“That’s it! That’s the thing!” Dave yelled, leveling the launcher at it. He fired and it missed by a mile; John was still struggling to get the rifle working, and the creature seized upon that weakness. Dave knew it would. He flung himself forward at the same time it crouched down to leap, and they collided mid-air in front of John, Dave trying to ram the stink-bomb launcher down one of the thing’s throats, ignoring the teeth gnashing at him and the claws ripping into his shirt again. He fired and a downright horrific smell exploded into the air. Coughing, he squeezed his eyes shut and started whaling on the thing with his free hand. Eventually it writhed from his grip, stumbling, hacking, the slow sulfur diffusion of the bomb eating it away from the inside out. If that wasn’t going to kill it, John finally getting the rifle working and blasting a hole in its side sure did. Dave stayed on the ground, struggling to breathe. He heard another shot, another yelp from the creature, and then silence other than his own heartbeat slamming his eardrums and the gentle sizzle of the creature dissolving. A hand grasped at his shoulder.

“C’mon, get up,” John panted, sounding almost slightly desperate. Dave groaned, still hacking, but let John drag him up, though he staggered the moment he tried to walk. John almost dumped the rifle on the ground in favour of catching him, but managed to keep hold of it and steady Dave at the same time. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” 

“It’s fine,” Dave croaked. “Let’s just go.” 

* * *

“We got another one,” John said as he helped Dave up the steps. 

“Wuhappened t’ _him_?” The farmer gestured to Dave with concern. 

“Dude, it was awesome. You should’ve seen it. He wrestled the thing like it was an alligator, which would’ve been significantly less-dangerous.” John grinned proudly. “ _This guy’s_ the real badass, not me.” 

“It wasn’t that extreme,” Dave managed tiredly, “but I _did_ tackle it when the gun jammed, yeah.” He refrained from adding ‘like a crazy motherfucker’ to the end of that.

“Yew gonna be okay, son?” The man asked as they walked into the house. 

Dave nodded as they passed. “Just pulled something, is all.” That was partly the truth. His entire body was tired and bruised and he was bleeding again, having ripped open the scabs on his old wounds, but he’d be alright. He’d probably have a few new scars from all this bullshit, _but he’d be alright._ They settled down for the night and Dave passed out practically the moment his head hit the pillow. John, however, found himself distressingly sleepless. As the sun slowly rose, he stared at the ceiling, thinking. He kept thinking about how that fucked-up thing was something Dave had to fight, alone, in the dark, totally unprepared, and how _he still killed it._ Sure, he came home looking like goddamned mincemeat, but yet he still went right back out the next night with John’s help to go look for a second one. John hated feeling guilty, but he knew it was deserved; even with the both of them, that thing, the Not-Coy-Yote, was still a damned formidable monster. You’d have to be some kind of superhero to take that shit down all alone first try and come out unscathed. But still, the fact he managed as well as he did really had John, for once, questioning his usefulness in Dave’s life. He didn’t like that, that uncertainty. John rolled onto his side, pressing his back to Dave’s, and dropped into an uneasy broken sleep, sometime around noon, judging by the amount of light in the room at the time.

* * *

The rest of the week, nothing happened. John went into town one more time, but he was back within two hours, and wasn’t high—at least not obviously, anyways. But he had another job for them. He’d used the town’s library to check on his website (which he never formatted for looking at on a phone) and apparently several people had commented or e-mailed him or whatever, asking for their help, so they had a string of work set up for them. John had also obtained another (newer) atlas from somewhere, which he’d plotted their course on already. It was time to get going again.


	3. Always a Headcase

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No new warnings apply to this chapter.

A month after the debacle at the farmer’s place, John and Dave were finally back to normal. Mostly. John disappearing became a little more frequent for a stretch of time, and his share of the money was almost always entirely gone very quickly, but he didn’t leave Dave entirely high-and-dry anymore, and his vanishing petered out a bit eventually. They did a few more cases, but none as life-threatening as the Not-Coy-Yote case had been. The wounds healed over into scars, joining a slowly-growing collection. Eventually, Dave supposed, he would have as many as John did, for roughly as many stupid-ass reasons. 

Money stayed tight. They spent several nights in the car, sleeping in shifts, driving for hours on end every day. It wasn’t all bad—there was a lot to see, after all—but it wasn’t any walk in the park. Dave was exhausted, every single day, and some days even John seemed a little worn-out. Dave guessed he’d figured this would feel like an extended vacation and was starting to come to terms with the fact that it most decidedly was not. Things weren’t as tense anymore, though. Much as Dave was frustrated with John for his vices it’s not like any of that was new, and it’s not like he was going to let go of the one thing he had left. He and John were all each other had now. He would just have to weather the good with the bad and hope the bad didn’t get them both killed. 

John kept in touch with a few people from Undisclosed, mainly his bandmates, through calls and texts and sometimes even postcards. Dave and Amy kept in regular contact through their at-least-once-per-week phone calls, texting every now-and-again, and sometimes John and Dave would pick up a particularly goofy postcard to send her. She liked keepsakes like that; Dave preferred the phone calls, ironically. Sometimes that felt like the only thing keeping him going. Winter was approaching, looming on the horizon, and they both knew that would make things harder for them. They’d packed winter coats, and John’s car would probably be good at keeping them warm, but it’d make the more outdoors cases they took difficult to go through, and of course, they weren’t really stoked about cold and flu season. 

“This blows,” Dave remarked, looking out their newest motel window at the spindly, clawing limbs of trees having lost most if not all of their leaves already. 

“Mmh?” John looked up from where he was scrolling on his phone, toothbrush still in his mouth. He’d gotten distracted brushing his teeth about ten minutes ago. 

“It’s gonna get cold soon. The leaves are already all gone.” Dave let the blinds fall back as they were before, and sighed, already tired. Or, rather, still tired. He hardly slept last night. 

“Hmh.” 

“Dude, finish brushing your teeth.” 

John put down his phone and wandered back to the bathroom. Dave sat down on the bed and just… zoned out. Slowly fell out of his body, like he was pretending he wasn’t even there, brain consumed by fog. Any minute now he’d wake up in his bed, in his home, maybe with Amy beside him or maybe not or maybe that wouldn’t even matter. He’d wake up and he’d go to work at Wally’s and he’d hate his existence but he’d hate it less than he hated it right now. It’d be comfortable, at the very least, in its mediocrity. Why is it always just after you’ve thrown something away that you start to realize it was important? Why did he even bother still getting up in the morning? Why didn’t he just— 

“Hey?” John was shaking his shoulder. Dave flinched slightly as he snapped back to earth a bit, then blinked up at him, and John sighed in relief. “Dude, you looked like a fucking zombie for a minute there.” He sat down next to Dave. “What’s up, you tired?” 

He was using That Tone again. The tone he used when he was about to gently lecture Dave on all the reasons he should stay alive. Normally Dave appreciated it but right now, he just felt weirdly resentful. Why did he have to stick around for everything to culminate in _this?_ “I’m fine. Just… yeah. Tired.” He looked out the window ahead of them. It felt like he was watching it from the back of his skull, like if he tried, he could see the edges of his eye sockets. He was sitting too far back in his own head.

John didn’t say anything for a moment, then leaned over and rested his head on Dave’s shoulder. Dave didn’t react. “I’m tired, too.” 

* * *

John drove for most of the day, then slept in the passenger seat while Dave drove a while. They chatted a bit when they were both awake, but Dave still didn’t really have much energy. Despite that, he still drove from evening until sunrise the next day. John slept the whole time. Dave didn’t blame him at all for that. They were both getting worn-down by this. It had occurred to him that, previously, their life ratio had been mostly boring shit to a little bit of this life-threatening peril weirdness, but now it was almost 50/50, with the added burden of They Have No Fucking Money Or A Home. He wasn’t sure how much longer they could handle that. He was getting that burnt-out sort of fatigue where he honestly didn’t even care if they solved a case and got paid anymore. Or, well, he cared about getting paid, but it was starting to feel pointless—hopeless, even. John would piss away his share, Dave would be left to struggle to get them by with his. Sometimes John still had some to chip in. _Sometimes_. They stole most of their food. If he was being honest, they were almost at the Dumpster-diving stage of it, and he _hated_ that. He wanted to avoid that as long as he could, but it was inevitably on the horizon and he was going to have to accept that. If things kept up like this they’d probably end up dying out here, from hunger or thirst or getting stranded and murdered. He hoped that last one wouldn’t happen. If he just suddenly up and stopped answering Amy’s calls, she’d be worried sick.

The roads blurred together as the sky went from blue to black to pale grey to pink. Dave didn’t feel like a human anymore, just an extension of the car, but in his mind that fit; he wasn’t human anymore, anyway. John stirred as orange was just beginning to ooze across the sky, rubbing his eyes and sitting up properly. He glanced at the clock, did a double-take, and then his eyes snapped to Dave, who wasn’t really paying much attention to him, seemingly too focused on the road. But he wasn’t, not really anyway, and John could tell, feeling a little ill as he recognized that zombielike look on Dave’s face again. “Did you drive all fuckin’ night?” John asked incredulously.

“I wasn’t tired,” Dave croaked. His throat and eyes felt so dry. 

John shook his head and shut his eyes for a moment, silently annoyed with Dave but only because it was easier than being worried. “Pull over, we’re switching.” 

“I’m fine.” 

“You’re **not** , dude, you look like hell and—”

“Hey, I _always_ look like shit.” Dave chuckled mirthlessly.

“You—” John cut himself off with a small sigh. “ _Dave_. Please.” 

John damn near _never_ said ‘please’ about _anything_. It jarred Dave halfway out of his trance-or-something and he shut his mouth and pulled over when he could. They swapped places, Dave settled into the passenger seat, and then they were off again. Dave stared blankly out the windshield, not sure if he was still awake or not. He only realized he slept when between blinks the sky went from a hazy pink-blue gradient to the broad bright blue of daylight, and he still felt tired, just differently. He groaned, sitting up properly, rubbing the stiffness out of his neck, and noticed they weren’t on the highway anymore. 

“Hey, Dave!” John said cheerfully. “We’re almost there.” 

“Where’s ‘there,’ again?” Dave rasped. John gestured to a bottle of water in the cupholder and Dave nabbed it gladly.

“People who wanted us to de-ghost their house. They’re off for a month-long vacation.” 

Dave paused with the water bottle halfway to his mouth. “And… when are they coming back?” 

John grinned and Dave took a sip of the water. “Two weeks from now. They said we can sleep in the guest room, but the most ghost activity is in the kid’s room. Want it solved in a week.” 

“They… they said we can stay there?” 

“Yep! Just asked we don’t break anything if we don’t have to. And not to run the water bill up or anything like that. So I vote we break a little bit of stuff and take at least one shower a day.” 

“They _paying_ us for this?”

“Yeah. Well, kinda. They said they left some money on the counter. I’m thinking we should use it for food and gas while we’re there. That’s what they told me it was for, so.” John shrugged. 

Dave nodded silently, mulling it over. Eventually, he murmured, “Fuckin’ sweet.” A house. He hadn’t slept in a house in a while now. 

“Right!” John sounded excited. “We’ll get there in time to take a nap before the shit starts, too. That’ll be nice.” 

That did sound very, very nice. In fact all of it sounded extremely nice. Way too nice. Dave already resolved to be highly suspicious about it all, if only because John clearly wasn’t. Things that sounded too good to be true often were, indeed, not true. He didn’t want them walking into a death trap, so for the remainder of the car ride he devised a series of ways this was going to go south, and how he’d handle it. 

* * *

The house was lovely. It was in a more high-end sort of neighborhood, and when they pulled up, someone from the house to the left came out to ask if they were “The Supernaturalists,” then let them go about their business. Dave informed John (yet again) that he hated that name and John smugly told him if he hated it so much, _he_ could “do the talking to people stuff.” Dave resolved to just _silently_ hate it from then on out. They found a spare key inside a flowerpot by the front door and Dave absently remembered the many plants he’d unsuccessfully tried to look after. These looked healthy. 

The house was big. It was probably bigger than John’s house, which had already been a rather nice size. It had two floors; the guest room was on the first floor. John had declared their first task (after getting all of their equipment and shit in here) to be taking a nap, so they immediately located the guest room and settled in there. 

“Oof, _man_ ,” John flopped down on the raised bed, “this bed feels like heaven after all those motel beds… Dave, I think this shit doesn’t even have springs. It’s that memory-foam goodness.”

“This is fucking wild, dude.” Dave said, still pacing around the room almost suspiciously. He squinted at a photo frame like it was hiding a weapon. It merely held a family photo. “They’re just… letting us stay here? For a _week_? A whole week?” 

“Yeah, dude. It’s just like an AirBNB. C’mon, lie down. You’ll pass out in seconds. Seriously, I’m fadin’ out already.” John patted the bed beside him.

Dave sighed. He wanted to keep doubting it but he really was tired and he’d already done three laps of the room, including whipping open the door to the very empty closet and peering around inside. There wasn’t anything weird here as far as he could tell. It couldn’t do much harm to just take a nap, he supposed. If something attacked them, well, they could handle it. He climbed onto the bed beside John and discovered, quite pleasantly, that John was right. This bed was _excellent_ compared to their usual fare. He rolled onto his side, shut his eyes, and passed out in moments. 

He woke later to the sound of a TV and the smell of pizza. He lifted his head to see John sitting with his legs crossed in some kind of yoga sitting position, a slice of pizza in one hand and the remote to the television on the wall in the other. Two beers were tucked into his lap. There was a closed pizza box between the two of them. Dave sat up and rubbed his face. 

John glanced over. “Hey, buddy. You feel better?” He did, actually, so he nodded. John shoved a beer at him. “Here. Have some. We’ve got our work cut out for us tonight, I think.” 

Dave cracked it open and opened the box to pick up a piece of pizza. “Yeah?” 

“Yeah. Kid’s been seeing some weird, weird shit. Faces and shit like—” John gestured vaguely in front of him with the remote— “driftin’ around. They took ’em through psych evals, all turned up nothin’, kid only sees that shit when they sleep in their own room. Not here, nowhere else. Parents, they see some shit out of the corner of their eye sometimes when they pass the room.” 

“So, what, we hang out in there all night?” Dave didn’t really want to sit in some kid’s bedroom until dawn. 

“Yeah, for tonight, maybe. But,” John lifted one finger in front of Dave’s face, as if Dave was about to interrupt him, which he wasn’t, “there’s _more_. The parents’ closet gives them weird vibes. It’s one of those big-ass walk-ins. Husband swears he’s seen somebody standing in it watching them before, when they left the door open one time. Wife doesn’t exactly believe him but says she wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Why’s that shit always in bedrooms?” Dave wondered aloud. 

John shrugged. “No idea. Also there’s some kinda fuckery in the basement but that might just be the whole ‘basements are spooky’ thing.”

They ate the entire pizza while watching some shitty reality TV show John had actually been trying to follow whenever their motel had a functional TV in it. Dave had absorbed a little bit of it through osmosis, though he barely paid any attention to it and often fell asleep while John was still watching. It was entertaining, though, in that shallow, it-kills-time kind of way most reality TV was. 

At the end of the show, John knocked back the last of his beer, and said, “Alright, let’s get going,” before reaching one hand down towards the sheets, to wipe them off, like he did on his couch at home.

Dave snagged his hand, yanking it away from the sheets. “Don’t wipe your fuckin’ hands on their sheets, dude, come on.” 

John wriggled his greasy hand out of Dave’s grip and, in a quick swipe, wiped it off on Dave’s shorts instead. “Fine, then,” he laughed. Dave swatted his arm but he wasn’t really mad—his clothes were always dirty as all hell these days, what did it matter? He snickered a little, shaking his head. “C’mon, let’s go.” John slid off the bed. “It’s almost 1AM, that’s usually when they report the weird shit happening.” 

They tromped up the carpeted stairs to the kid’s bedroom. It looked roughly like what Dave expected. A bit of a mess, a bit cluttered with toys and other kids stuff, not a space he wanted to spend much time in. “Great. Where’s the weird shit?” 

John shrugged. “I dunno. Around?” He hazarded a guess, glancing around. “Where’s the Ouija board, again?” 

Dave sighed. “In the trunk.” 

“Go get it,” John said as Dave was already halfway out the door.

* * *

“This is always so fuckin’ stupid,” Dave grumbled. 

“Sure, but They _love_ stupid.” John grinned at him. “They _live_ for this dumbass shit.”

Dave glanced to one side and tactfully didn’t point out that John also lives for this dumbass shit. “Are you sure we shouldn’t—I dunno—put a plate or something under that candle?” The carpeted floor would light up in seconds should it tip over, he was sure. 

“It’ll be fine.” 

They were sitting on the floor, an Ouija board’s worth of space apart, each with both hands on the planchette, John touching Dave’s hands far too much in his opinion. He always did that, putting his hands on Dave’s instead of on the planchette, though Dave supposed it’d be easier to tell if John was trying to fuck with the planchette that way. They’d set everything up (meaning, they put the board on the floor and John lit the one candle he could find that wasn’t a sparkler or a birthday candle “for the mood”), said the stupid little invitation spiel that came in the toybox for the thing, and now, it was simply time to wait. 

They sat there for a solid five minutes before the thing started to scoot just a little.

“Are you moving it?” Dave asked, an accusatory edge to his voice, raising one eyebrow at John. 

John, however, was staring down, wide-eyed. “No.” 

_“Are you?”_ Dave wasn’t gonna let John bamboozle him again. 

“I’m _not_ , dude!” John had transitioned from awe to excitement. “Cool! We got real paranormal activity! Write this shit down!” 

“ _You_ write it down.” Dave grouched. “Your hands are still all on mine.” 

“Oh right.” John withdrew one hand to fetch his phone. The planchette was still on it’s way to one letter. 

It paused over the G to begin with, then took its sweet, sweet time scooting over the rest of the letters. They were nearly bored to tears by the end of it, all sense of excitement or fear evaporated.

“…L…F.” John looked down at his phone and scowled, then chucked it. 

“‘Go Fuck Yourself,’” they both said, John with intense frustration, Dave with a more tired frustration. 

“Well, we should’ve seen _that_ coming,” Dave sighed, withdrawing his hands from under John’s. 

“I guess at least we know, like, for sure, _some_ weird shit’s in here.” John grumbled, pouting. 

“And it doesn’t wanna talk.” Dave yawned. “So. Now what?” 

“I dunno! Sage the place? Seems like it’s not strong enough to _hurt_ us.” He shrugged it off. 

“Did that shit even work last time, or did it just make the thing mad?” 

John considered. Neither of them actually knew, at least not yet. They’d only added that to their repertoire recently, after somebody who’d read Dave’s book decided it would help them. So far it actually hadn’t done much but make a room smell weird for a while. “Only one way to find out.” 

Dave sighed. John was technically right in that infuriating way he usually was: just right enough to justify the stupid and dangerous thing he was going to do or had just done. It used to be almost charming. “Fine.” 

* * *

They left the kids’ bedroom after they sage-bombed it, because Dave really hated the smell of it, to check out the rest of the bullshit happening in this house. The parents’ bedroom was a much more comfortable space. Larger, more sensibly furnished, less weird shit on the floor. Dave felt less uneasy there. “Closet’s where the weird shit happens, right?” 

John snickered. 

“Shut up. I mean they said they saw some kinda figure standing in there.”

“Yeah,” John replied. 

Dave eyed the closet. Something about it unnerved him, which he actually found pretty annoying. He felt a bit like a stupid little kid, fearing monsters in the closet, and because of that, he said, “We should probably start there, I guess.” 

John stepped towards it. “Think there’s gonna be, what, some fuckin’ occult symbols carved into the floor under the carpet?” He asked a bit cheekily. 

“Weirder shit has happened.” Dave replied as John stepped into the closet. Dave hung back for reasons even he couldn’t fathom, still hesitant, until he eventually got his shit together and stepped up to the door. Right in time for it to slam shut right in his face. He flinched, then reached for the door. It didn’t budge. “John?” He called, puzzled. “The fuck just happened?” He clawed with stubby, useless fingernails at the edge of the door and found himself hating this kind of stupid fancy folding-door that required you to, he guessed, always leave it fashionably ajar, or it’d hold your coats hostage forever. 

The door began to rattle. “Dave?” John’s voice was muffled through the door. Dave opened his mouth to answer but before he could, he heard John yelp in fright, sending a jolt of adrenaline through Dave. “Oh, fuck!” 

“John? You okay?” Dave started to shove at the door. It was still rattling and he could hear John yelling, but unintelligibly now, muffled by what sounded like a thousand flags billowing in a high wind. After half a second of pointless shoving, Dave decided: fuck this door. He slammed into it with his whole body, then backed up and slammed into it again. It caved on the second try, wood cracking, and with one last slam he stumbled into the closet in an explosion of fancy wood splinters, flicking the flashlight on. All around him was a storm of clothes, flying off the hangers, whacking him in the face. A scarf threatened to choke him. “John!” 

John was pressed to the back wall, flailing, trying to keep a large winter coat at bay. Dave reached out and ripped the coat from the air then threw it on the ground to stomp on it, borderline enraged at this point. They’d fought a lot of ridiculous shit before but fighting somebody’s wardrobe? He had no clue clothes could be this dangerous but he was pissed off about it. He grabbed John’s arm roughly and yelled, “Come on!” before dragging him back towards the now-busted door. They fell out of the closet in a clumsy tangle of limbs and could finally breathe again; the hurricane of fancy clothing behind them seemed relegated to the confines of the closet, but, just in case, they both scrambled backward as quickly as possible. 

“Are you okay?” Dave asked, sitting up properly. 

“Yeah,” John panted, sitting up too. “Shit, that was kinda scary, actually. I almost got my shit rocked by a Burlington coat.” He rubbed his throat with a grimace. 

Dave hummed. “How are we gonna deal with that?” 

“Burn all their shit?” 

Normally, Dave would have said ‘yes’ to what was potentially an easy solution, but then something occurred to him, “What if it’s not the clothes, but something in there _using_ the clothes?” 

John’s nose crinkled as he thought carefully. “Well, we’ll have to wait for them to calm the fuck down before we can try anything.” 

“True.” Dave grunted as he stood up, then extended a hand to John. “Let’s go back to the kid’s room.” 

John took it, used Dave’s help to stand, and then said, “Oh, I got an idea.” He fished his phone out of his pocket and lifted it up, opening the camera. “Maybe if we get a photo…” 

“The hell will that do?” 

John shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe it’ll show up on camera?” He lifted his phone and squinted at the slightly-broken screen, then started taking photos of the closet. Pretty much the moment he did, the clothes all dropped to the floor and he only got a couple blurry images of the dark shape approaching before it was on him, knocking his phone out of his hands and bowling him to the ground. There was a split-second of confusion; the thing loomed over John, sitting on his chest, and he stared up into the darkened shape in abject terror for a moment before instinct took over and he lifted his arms to grip it and throw it from him with a shriek. It was unclear if John shrieked or the thing shrieked but either way, the moment he could, John scrambled to his feet and booked it for the door. Dave hadn’t even had time to react to any of that before the dark shape had recovered and flung itself upon him instead. The moment it did, John’s reaction made sense. 

This thing was no fucking joke. 

Dave couldn’t see its face, but he knew it was making eye contact with him, and then suddenly he wasn’t in that room at all, launched backwards through time, the worst of the worst blurring all around him. Of course, that was its biggest mistake. Dragging the worst of Dave’s memories to the forefront of his brain wasn’t the demotivator it had likely hoped for; instead of a wail of despair, Dave cried out in absolute blinding fury and surged forward, throwing a punch that sank right into the black abyss of its face. This seemed to throw it off its game; bony hands unclenched from the collar of his shirt and flailed towards his arm. Most disturbing of all was that Dave’s hand had firmly lodged itself in what felt like some sort of half-congealed pudding—like poorly-made, half-set fudge. It was revolting, and he yanked his arm right back out. It was covered in a thick sludgy layer of black goop, and he immediately tried to shake it off, but it was already dissolving into smoke. It shrank back from him for a moment, then there was a blur and something hard and wooden whacked into his face.

“Fuck!” Dave stumbled back, hand to his nose reflexively, grimacing. The pain of it brought tears to his eyes and anger to his core, and he ground his teeth together, furious. How dare this stupid fucking thing smack him in the face with the bits of that shitty door? He picked the piece up and swung it wildly. It splintered in a fantastic manner upon making contact with the entity, and he felt a grim satisfaction flood him as he kept swinging until it was just bits of shrapnel in his hands.

John raced back into the room, then, stinkbomb launcher in-hand, and fired it point-blank at the already-wounded whatever-it-was. It shrieked but Dave couldn’t tell if the sulfur was hurting it or just pissing it off. He didn’t have to, though, as it promptly noped out and phased through the window.

Dave glared after it, hands still clenched into fists, daring it to show back up, but it didn’t. John looked first at the window, then at Dave’s free-bleeding nose. “You okay?” 

“Yeah,” Dave replied far too quickly. He was standing, alert and responsive, but his eyes were hollow and his hands shook. He had that faraway look to his face again and John resolved to privately keep an eye on him. 

“Think we should call it a night,” John clapped him on the back twice, then shifted to loop an arm around Dave’s shoulders, other hand pulling his phone out again. “C’mere, first-night photo!” He held the phone up. Dave didn’t even have the energy to ask what the hell John meant, glancing over just in time to hear the loud fake shutter noise of John’s phone camera. He rolled his eyes once he caught on, shrugging John’s arm off his shoulders.“Oh, weird,” John said, looking at the photo with a very, very puzzled expression. 

Dave, ever self-conscious, immediately leaned over his shoulder. “What? What’s—” He cut off when he saw it, staring at the photo in consternation. John looked perfectly normal, obnoxiously photogenic as ever, but behind him were two bright, glowing eyes. Not the glowing eyes of a ghost, but of Dave, who had been just over his shoulder. The rest of his face was normal, but his eyes… They both stared in abject bewilderment. “What the fuck?” Dave managed. 

John suddenly grinned, zooming in on the image. “Dude, that’s cool as fuck, though. You’ve got, like. Cat eyes. You know how cat’s eyes shine super bright in darkness?” 

Dave nabbed his phone to look more closely at the image. He was borderline distraught, though he wasn’t entirely sure why—it was just too bizarre to fathom. “How the fuck…?” 

John took his phone back. “No idea.” 

“Delete that.” 

“Sure,” John replied, angling his phone away so Dave couldn’t see him send it to Amy. “It’s gone.” (It wasn’t.) “But still, holy shit.” Dave didn’t answer him, brow furrowed and looking away. John could tell he wasn’t really happy about it, or anything for that matter. Something was bothering him. John patted him on the shoulder again before saying, “C’mon, let’s get some rest.”

“Yeah.” Dave nodded a little numbly. “Yeah.”

* * *

“That was a cakewalk,” John remarked, settling in. 

“Mhm.” Dave yawned, though he didn’t agree at all. John was lying, anyway. Sunlight was just starting to illuminate the window, a rim of light around the edge of the curtains. He was pretty sure he’d sleep until it was pitch-black outside again. He passed out pretty quickly, but John wasn’t quite so lucky. The room grew slowly lighter, and he lay still, staring at the ceiling, tired but not able to sleep. He couldn’t puzzle out why, exactly, so he decided just to weather it out. Maybe he’d sleep, maybe he wouldn’t. He didn’t feel quite right.

Beside him, Dave twitched suddenly. He didn’t actually notice until the third, most-violent twitch; he glanced over. Dave flinched, brow furrowed, and John watched him with a little bit of confusion. He was sweating and the thought _well, that isn’t good_ flitted through John’s head. Still, John wasn’t keen to wake him up—he was twice as irritable when he wasn’t well-rested—so he didn’t reach over to shake him awake, much as he did want to. So he just watched quietly, warily, trying to think of something to do.

He thought about what that terrible closet-bogeyman thing had done to him, and slowly he started to put together both why he felt a little fucked-up and most likely why Dave wasn’t sleeping so well. He sat up a little, then reached over to nudge Dave’s shoulder quickly, stealthily. Dave snapped awake with a gasp, eyes wide and frightened, and he scanned the ceiling in disoriented confusion for a second before he remembered where he was. He lay there for a moment, still breathing hard, and John eyed him carefully before eventually speaking.

“You okay?” John asked coolly, like he hadn’t just watched that entire thing build up. 

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Dave, immediately defensive, rolled away from him and curled up. His heart was still racing and he was shivering. John patted his arm and he flinched hard; John immediately withdrew his hand and scooted back a little, giving Dave space. Dave appreciated it. John knew, on some level, and for once, Dave was glad someone knew.

“Sorry.” 

“S’fine.” 

Dave slept fitfully for the rest of the morning. It took John what felt like forever to finally fall asleep, but luckily once he did, he was out for a couple hours, though he woke feeling hardly rested at all, just tense and a little sick. He sat up, looked around, saw Dave still sleeping, and shuffled over to be beside him before flopping down again, hoping for some more pleasant dreams this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i just realized i never really stated this, but, this thing is gonna update at a chapter-per-month pace for right now--it's also gonna be, like, Really Long, at least what i have planned-out so far. but i think as i get more chapters done (beginnings are always hard as hell for me, i've been completing these chapters like As They Come Out, as opposed to the fact i Already have chunks of the middle and end written--) i'll switch to twice-per-month or, hell, maybe even something more frequent, if that's feasible.  
> anyways. thank-you to everyone who's already read this far! promise i won't do any more annoying notes like this, just, i really appreciate the feedback and i Need to express that. and i shouldve made note of the publishing schedule early so people know when to check back. it's so far been the 20th of every month.


	4. I’m Sure It’ll Work Itself Out Fine

Dave woke up with someone’s arm slung over him. He was too groggy to think at first, believing, for a moment, he really and truly had woken up back home again with Amy snuggled beside him, but as his eyes eased open to a completely foreign room he remembered where he was. He glanced down, saw John’s tattoos, then looked over and saw John, his face buried in Dave’s shoulder, and something in him just said, _well, of course._ He yawned and shifted a little, stiff from lying still for so long, then shut his eyes again. He didn’t fall asleep again, but he wasn’t really aiming to, either; he just didn’t feel like getting up yet. Mostly. Or maybe not mostly. He wasn’t sure if he truly stayed lying in bed to appreciate the mattress more or to keep from waking John, but he wasn’t going to do any investigation into which it was, because he’d rather claim he didn’t give a shit if John got woken up.

John was snoring quietly, and he’d somehow moved all the way across the whole bed to press up close to Dave. Dave wasn’t sure if this was hilarious or annoying—they had all this space now, and he was just going to act like they were still in a shitty motel bed? Just going to pack in right next to him like a sardine? He felt like if something like this had happened before this whole extended road trip mess he would’ve been a little pissed, but now he didn’t find it nearly so frustrating. He’d daresay it was almost sweet or something, actually, but he would never, because it decidedly wasn’t, you see, it wasn’t the kind of thing he’d think was pleasant at all. It was however. John didn’t move around in his sleep very much, beyond spreading out a bit—by Dave’s perception he had a tendency to stretch his arms out in particular, often winding up with one arm over Dave, or to grab the pillow or a wad of the blankets and curl around it. That was quite a distance to clear for him. Dave moving that much was far more likely—he tended to thrash with nightmares, something that often woke him up, albeit briefly, when he hit the wall or, more unfortunately, when he hit John (which would wake him in a mild panic, and Dave always felt bad)—but he clearly hadn’t. This was almost a puzzle, but one Dave really had no interest in solving, because it seemed pointless and stupid, so he elected instead to just keep lying there and appreciate the fact that he didn’t have to immediately get up and go. Hell, he could stay in a bed this comfy until the fucking end of time, he cared so little for getting up and being functional these days. He was still a little… rattled, after what that weird thing had done to him. He and John had elected to call it a Shitsucker for some reason to do with the fact it sucked all the worst shit out of you or something. An explanation John had come up with. Dave hadn’t cared enough to really listen, he just conceded that it had been John’s turn to name something so he had to go with it. He didn’t care. He didn’t have the energy. 

Dave wasn’t sure how long after he’d woken up that John woke up, but eventually he heard John take a deep breath, and Dave felt the arm slide off his chest as John rolled over and stretched with a little grunt. “Hey, Dave. You awake?”

Dave forced his eyes to open. John was lying on his back, lazily looking over at him. “Mhm.” 

“You hungry?” 

“D’you even have to ask?” Dave rubbed his eyes. 

John snickered. “What d’you wanna get?”

“Hmmmmdunno.” Dave shut his eyes again. Maybe he was more tired than he thought. 

“C’monnnn,” John nudged him gently. “Wake up. We’re gonna have to do more ghost-hunting shit, y’know.” 

“Five more minutes?” Dave wasn’t even sleeping before, he just didn’t want to have to get up yet. 

“Only if you let me sling my arm over you again,” John teased. Dave didn’t respond. He eased one eye open when he felt John’s arm thump into his side, but he closed it again upon realizing John wasn’t smacking him to start a fight, he was just being a shithead. “Isn’t that a little gay, Dave?”

“I’m just lying here,” Dave pointed out. “ _You’re_ the one being gay.” 

John didn’t answer that one. Dave cracked an eye open again just to make sure he wasn’t pissed-off, but instead of an irritated glare he saw John giving him an oddly soft look, which he quickly wiped off his face with a crooked grin the second he saw Dave’s eye open. “Good point.” 

“Leggo of me, shitbird.” Dave drew his shoulder closer to his ear and John immediately withdrew his arm and rolled away, getting out of bed. 

“If you don’t pick what to eat, I will, and you’ll probably not like it.” John said lightly. Dave grunted. “I’ll get you hazelnut coffee from Dunkin.” 

“Fuck off. I’m getting up.” Dave sat up painstakingly. He hated flavoured coffee and John knew it. 

* * *

“John, if you don’t quit slurping that drink, I’m gonna jam the straw down your windpipe,” Dave growled as he picked at his burger, pulling out the onions. They always put too much on, in his opinion, but it didn’t matter too much; he really just didn’t want to eat. He was hungry, sure, but he was tired of fast food and of feeling terrible about himself for eating it. It was all they could afford, although—skipping a meal or two wouldn’t hurt him, he realized. It’d save money, too… 

John set down his iced coffee, which was really just a plastic cup of ice now. “Much as I’d love to see you try, that’d probably put a damper on monster-hunting,” John joked lightly. 

They were sitting outside, enjoying the late-evening air, or at least that’s what John was doing. Leaning back with his back propped against the table, next to Dave, his elbows on the tabletop and head tilted to look at the sky, John kicked one foot against the dirt patch the table had been placed on. Whether the table was put there to cover the dirt or the dirt was put there to be under the table, neither could tell. They’d debated about it for a while, but couldn’t come to any agreement—not that they needed to, of course, it was always more about the journey than the destination between them—and eventually gave up on any explanation. 

A breeze ruffled through the clearing, tearing leaves off branches, cold and unfriendly. Dave shivered. John, somehow, seemed unaffected. Still he glanced over at Dave and said, “We should probably get back soon.” 

“Yeah.” Dave put the burger down. He didn’t want it, anyway. “Let’s go.” 

“We don’t have to go right _now—_ ” John started, but Dave cut him off. 

“Nah, it’s cold as balls.” Dave wrapped it up and moved to throw it away. 

“You can finish eating on the way back.” 

Dave snorted. “Like I need any more fast food.” He dumped the crumpled-up bag in the garbage, then drew his coat closer around him. “C’mon.” 

John eyed him, then stood up. “Alright.” 

John stuck close to him the rest of the day—or, well, night. It felt like ‘day’ to them given their sleep schedules were fucked to hell and back. Dave didn’t even notice til about the fourth hour they’d been awake, but he was staying just outside arm’s reach practically all the time, in that far-too-casual way he behaved when he was worried about Dave. Dave wondered about that, but didn’t say anything. He barely spoke at all, actually. He really didn’t feel up to it. While that stupid thing hadn’t actually rattled him too much in the moment, the fact it shook up his whole brain like that was fucking with him more in the long-term than he’d thought. It was like he’d gone into his room to find his usual laundromat-explosion, thought nothing of it and gone to bed only to find, in the morning, it was all completely rearranged, and now he needed to find that one shirt but it wasn’t near the foot of the bed where he left it. He felt incredibly befuddled by all of it, but he didn’t really want to talk about it. He was afraid if he said anything to John, the whole disorganized mess would come out, and that’d be an absolute fucking disaster. 

So he didn’t say anything and John hovered around him like a standoffish-but-needy cat. He didn’t hate it. It wasn’t even all that abnormal, until John decided if he wanted to go to a different room he was going to drag Dave along. This was of course waved away by him as wanting to share the owners’ booze with Dave, and he definitely wasn’t actually sticking close to Dave for his own reasons.

“Man, these people have the _nice_ liquor!” John whistled appreciatively as he peered into their cabinet. 

“Don’t drink their expensive shit,” Dave replied, then walked it back a little when John shot him a look: “Alright, don’t drink _all_ of it.” 

John grinned. “Like I’d drink it without you,” he said in an oddly sentimental tone. Dave rolled his eyes but couldn’t help a little smile. “C’mon. Let’s unwind a little!” Dave didn’t have any reason to protest that, so he didn’t. John pulled down a bottle, hefted it, inspected it, then nodded and pulled two glasses down next. Dave watched him, lazy, deciding he’d rather sit on the couch than help. It was a nice couch, comfy, comfier than any of the cheap shitty secondhand couches he’d ever owned. It reminded him of his adoptive parents’ furniture. They’d lived pretty decently, and much as he would rather die than go back into a house with them in it he did envy and miss that nice furniture, the luxury of it all. 

Not like he deserved it, though.

“This is so weird.” Dave said suddenly.

“Huh?” John turned to see what Dave could be commenting on but he wasn’t sure what Dave even was looking at. The photos on the wall? The furniture? The decor was a little bland in John’s opinion, but it wasn’t very _weird_. The opposite, actually. He turned back around to keep pouring their drinks, then carefully tucked the bottle under his arm and headed to join Dave.

“Just… this is how some people get to live their whole life. Like this,” Dave continued quietly, looking around. 

John settled in beside him with a sigh and pushed a glass into Dave’s hand. “Well, yeah. Hey, maybe someday, right? We could make it big like Marconi. Get some big-ass houses like this one.” 

Dave struggled to imagine it but he really couldn’t think that far into the future. He could hardly think into next week. Still, he replied, “Yeah, maybe,” and didn’t think about the fact he too had had a house of his own just earlier this year. They both were silent for quite a while, John knocking back his drink fairly quickly while Dave just sipped his a little contemplatively.

John poured a little more into Dave’s glass when it was nearly empty. “Hey, what would you want in your big-ass superhouse? I’d want at least three pool tables. And one big pool, though I guess that’d be _outside_ the house.” 

“Mmhhh.” Dave considered. He found he couldn’t easily see himself living anywhere luxurious. He’d never be able to earn it. “Just a really nice bed, I think.” 

John scoffed lightly. “Come on, get more _creative!”_

“Then I want to own a pit of tigers. To throw people in it when they ask me dumb questions.” 

He laughed at that, smacking Dave’s knee lightly. “Oh, _fine_. You’ll be invited to my _cool_ house, though, even if _you_ live in a _boring_ house.” He grinned a little drunkenly at Dave. “You’ll _always_ be invited to my parties.” 

“Thanks,” Dave replied. And he really meant it, on some level, in ways he didn’t fully understand. 

A loud thump interrupted that tender moment, and they both flinched, Dave almost immediately springing to his feet, John stumbling clumsily to his moments after, setting the bottle down on the coffee table. They paused, looking around, and exchanged a ‘we couldn’t have both hallucinated that at the exact same time, right?’ sort of glance, and then a second thump scared them shitless.

“The basement,” John said suddenly. Dave nodded grimly, gripping his glass tightly. “Wait, hey, we should get weapons first.” John tugged Dave back by his shoulder.

“Oh, right.” 

They approached the basement again, this time with a gun and The Bible Belter in hand. The door thumped yet again as they were getting ready, but stopped when they set up the stereo to blast the one CD of 80’s ballads they had. Dave stepped in front of the door, adjusted his grip on the bat, glanced back to affirm John was still good-to-go, then ripped open the door. 

There was nothing but the stairs before them. He paused for a second, waiting for something to come roaring up the steps at them, but all was quiet. He pushed the door all the way open, letting go of it, gripping the nail-filled bat with both hands as he started down the stairs, John close behind him. All was silent, but Dave knew that was just to lure them further in. He ground his teeth as he tiptoed down, eyes peeled for something, anything. The floor, he could see, was nearly filled with boxes. Made sense to him; these people already had so much excess, why not store even more bullshit down here? He couldn’t even fathom what the hell would be in these boxes. Maybe just keepsakes and memorabilia. But then, why were there so many of them?

He was halfway into the room when suddenly every box around him fucking _exploded_ . He squawked (he’d insist he didn’t, but he most definitely did) and jumped back as the contents of the boxes, once freed, immediately leapt for him. Something that felt like inhuman hands clawed up his legs and his torso, not groping but _tearing_ at him, and he’d never admit that he screamed as he started swiping The Bible Belter at them. He didn’t care that he was whacking himself with it, too, he just wanted them _off_ him. He heard John yelling, too, and assumed he was dealing with something similar. He couldn’t even see what the hell he was swinging at—rats? Tarantulas? Disembodied hands?—because whatever they were, they were pitch black, but they felt disturbingly like human hands groping around in the dark, latching onto anything they could find. He felt fingernails drawing blood from his legs and he flailed, kicking, stumbling; for a single terrifying moment he thought he’d fall over backward and be consumed by the hands but he righted himself again and kept swinging. 

Then suddenly an immense amount of light and heat burst out from behind him and he yelped, flinching, turning around to see none other than John, shirt on fire, lighter in hand. Even with that light he still couldn’t see what the hell was attacking them but he _could_ see them all bursting into flames. He glanced quickly to the walls and was relieved to see stone. John, yelling, continued to press his lighter to the creatures left on him, heedless of burning himself, and then once they were all off he quite literally ripped his shirt off and chucked the flaming thing into the middle of the basement. Another fireball explosion and suddenly damn near everything was on fire. They scrambled back to the stairs, Dave shoving John up them with a frantic “go, go, go, go!” even as he tried to turn around and watch the flames. 

Just as quickly as they began, the fires suddenly dissolved, dissipating into a thick choking smoke that made them cough and tripped the sprinklers. Fortunately, under the artificial rain that too dissipated rapidly, and the two stood, soaked, on the steps for a moment, panting. Dave’s grip on The Bible Belter turned his knuckles white. John remembered to close his lighter but only after the sprinklers had started going, so it was potentially ruined. He jammed it back into his pocket anyways, looking at the charred mess before the two of them. It looked like whatever those things were, they liquified when set on fire, immediately hardening to a set-fudge sort of consistency. Or maybe it was tar. Neither of them was going to get close to check; it wasn’t their mess to clean up, after all. The sprinklers stopped going after a few minutes.

“Hope that didn’t call the fire department,” John commented. Dave didn’t respond for a moment, then sat down heavily where he was standing.

“Gimme that bottle,” Dave wheezed. John went back up and brought down the bottle and their glasses from before, and they sat on the basement steps and drank far more of the bottle than Dave had initially said they should. 

* * *

The fourth night they spent there, Dave woke up around midday with John right in his face. For a second he was confused and a little irritated, thinking John had rolled on over into his side of the bed again, until he realized, in abrupt fright and embarrassment, that no, actually, John had been the one to stay put. He had one arm over John, and he quickly yanked it away, staring wide-eyed in search of any sign that the movement woke John up. John snored away, oblivious, and Dave shuffled backward, then clambered out of bed to put distance between himself and whatever that situation was. Immediately he tried to put it out of his mind.

He fished his phone out of his pocket as he wandered to the kitchen, dialling Amy. It was either morning or evening or something in Undisclosed now. They’d gone east, but he couldn’t remember if that put them earlier or later than her. Regardless, she answered the phone at the second ring with a chipper, “Hey, babe!” 

“Hey,” he smiled. “How are you?” 

“Good, good. How are you?” 

“I’m okay,” and for once he meant it. “You’re not gonna believe this.” 

“Oh?”

“We’re, like, basically house-sitting for some upper-class family with a ghost problem. But it was a total cakewalk, and we got their shit fixed in the first couple nights, so now we just get to sleep here for the rest of the week.” 

“Ooh, wow.” 

“You should see this place, Amy. You’d love it. It’s beautiful.” Even though picket fences and front gardens weren’t really Dave’s style, he still felt an odd sort of twinge in his chest when he thought about how he’d probably never be able to share a place like this with Amy. “Definitely somebody’s dream house.” 

“Take lots of pictures! I’d love to see them.” 

“We got some ghost photos.” 

“Oh, send me those, too. I love how blurry and terrible they always look. Ghosts are more camera-shy than _you_ , David! I didn’t think it was possible.” 

He snorted. “Yeah, yeah.” 

“So I guess that means you guys are sleeping in an actual bed, right? Or even, actual bed _s_?” She tried to emphasize the ‘s’ as much as she could without sounding like a cartoon snake. 

“ _Bed_ ,” He replied, “but yeah, it’s like, foam or something. The best mattress I’ve slept on since losing my house.” 

Amy laughed. “At this point I think you and John may have shared a bed more than you and I have,” she teased lightly. 

For some reason Dave felt his face burn and his stomach flipped. “Wha—No, I—I don’t think so, don’t be—that can’t be right.” 

That made Amy laugh a bit more. “You sound rattled, David! Are you okay?” 

Dave struggled for a second, stammering a bit, then sighed. “I miss you,” he said by way of nonanswer. Why he couldn’t answer, he didn’t know, but he’d rather change the subject than sort it out now. 

“I miss you too,” she said sincerely. He really wanted to hold her. “I’ll be with you for summer, right? I’m gonna take Winter Break to work so I can save up.” 

They’d had to change their plans a little bit to accommodate the fact John and Dave had no fucking money and most (if not all) of Amy’s money was going into college. Dave still wasn’t so sure about her working, much as she said it would be okay because they’d let her stay in her dorm over the break so she barely had to commute or anything. For her spring semester, too, she was going to get a job on-campus to further save up, all so she wouldn’t have to go without her prescription over the summer. 

“Of course. We’ll come back to pick you up when the time comes and you can join us on this fucked-up little quest of ours until you get tired of it or until you have to move back into the dorms, whichever comes first.” 

“Okay!” She chirped happily. “I can’t wait.” 

“Me neither.” 

Footsteps caught his attention and he glanced over to see John padding into the kitchen. He waved with a little smile and Dave nodded to him before turning back to his phone call. As he and Amy kept talking, John puttered around the kitchen, making himself a fairly large sandwich with the family’s food. He nudged Dave at one point when he was walking past and mouthed “want something?” to him, to which Dave shook his head lightly. He wasn’t sure if he wanted anything to eat yet. 

Eventually, Amy politely asked after John, and, at Dave’s not-very-subtle “get the hell over here” signal, they traded off, John taking Dave’s phone and Dave finally deciding to figure out if he wanted food. 

It was a calm ‘morning.’ They had gotten lucky that most of these ‘mornings’ had been very calm after the mess of the first few days. It was the kind of break they really needed. They spent the remainder of their time in the house spending most of the cash they’d been given on alcohol, lounging around the place, being stupid. Nothing else happened until their last day there. The morning-of, they were lying in the bed shooting the shit, as per usual, still a little buzzed (as per usual). They hit a lull in conversation where John was just beginning to contemplate sleep; Dave, too, was contemplating something, staring at the ceiling.

“I miss that shitty fucking hockey game,” Dave said suddenly. John didn’t say anything, so he continued, “Y’know, that one we could get—fuck, what was it, over a hundred points? Two hundred? God we got _stupid_ good at that game.” 

John chuckled. “Yeah,” he said fondly. “Yeah, we did.” 

“I miss that,” Dave reiterated softly, and once again John had nothing to say. “I miss staying up ’til five in the fucking morning playing that game and pretending to hate every minute. Why was that shit so fun?” 

John hummed. “I dunno. It was a pretty shit game.” He rolled over onto his side, curling up a little. “I miss it too, though. I miss having _fun_ reasons to be up at five a.m..” 

Dave glanced over in mild surprise. “What, this isn’t fun for you anymore?” He wanted to be teasing John, but part of him was actually afraid John really _wasn’t_ having fun anymore.

John considered. “Alright, some non-life-threatening fun, I guess,” he amended, and Dave felt relief. 

He played it off with a snicker. “Surprised you find _anything_ that isn’t life-threatening fun.” 

“It’s a small list.” 

Dave laughed. 

In truth what John missed was the meaningless bullshit chatter they had, for hours on end, talking about everything and nothing. Not like that stopped, just, the weight of everything all around them felt like it was crushing the fun out of everything. The banter now was a brief respite, but he felt, the whole time, that it’d eventually end, and everything would suck again, whereas before, he could pretend that window of time where they were both sitting there, on his couch, always at least a little drunk, maybe even a bit stoned, would last forever. Things had only sucked when Dave had to leave in the morning and John had to pretend he didn’t miss him too much. Truth be told, when he asked Dave to come with him, he’d thought it’d be that effortless easy companionship the whole time, and the fact that it wasn’t like that at all was starting to scare him. When they were in Undisclosed he’d always been ready to hang out with Dave, but he was starting to worry if Dave couldn’t take this much time around him—stuck with him. He worried Dave felt trapped or something. He didn’t like that thought.

“I’m gonna pass out now. G’night, Dave.” 

“Night, John.” 

Dave kept lying on his back for a long while, staring at the ceiling, watching sunlight bleeding through the curtains. Eventually his eyes eased shut, though they didn’t stay shut for long—at least, not by his perception. Some time later he faded back in, confused as to what woke him until he, very groggily, lifted his head and immediately froze. 

There was a shadow man standing at the foot of the bed, looking right at them. Dave got the distinct impression it was smiling and not in a pleasant way. He shot upright, slamming his hand down to his left where John had been, practically punching him right in the sternum as he leaned over to put a bit of a barrier between him and the shadow man. This of course woke John with a start, and he yelped at the same time Dave started yelling what he’d meant to be, “John, get the fuck up!” but turned out to be a far more incoherent “jawngeddafuckup!” 

Fortunately, it got the point across. John scrambled to sit up and caught just a glimpse of the shadow man before it vanished into thin air again. Dave threw himself out of bed, rushing to where it had been, looking all around, hands clenched into fists. Nothing there. Not even anything running out of the room—it was just gone. He looked left and right and all around, even yanked open the closet, but there wasn’t a single trace of the shadowman.

John spoke first. “What the fuck?”

“I don’t know. I woke up and it was—it was just— _there_ , **looking** at me. Shit.” Dave ran a shaking hand through his hair, taking deep breaths to make his heart stop hammering. 

“And your first idea was to fuckin’ punch me in the chest?” John rubbed the offended area, sleepy and a little grumpy. 

Dave heaved an annoyed sigh. “Look, I panicked and I didn’t want you to get hurt. I didn’t mean to hit you that hard. Or at all. I was really aiming more for a strong nudge.” 

John’s irritation faded a little. “It’s fine. I mean if I had to pick between dying violently and a hard hit from you, pretty sure the choice is a no-brainer.” He yawned. “I’m goin’ back t’sleep, though.” He settled back in, rolling over. 

“Alright, man.” Dave paced around the room for a bit longer, still wary, and checked the closet two or three more times before eventually deciding to sit down on the bed again. He wasn’t going to sleep. He actually really, desperately wanted to leave the room, but fuck if he was about to leave John sleeping in here all alone. So he just sat near John like a guard dog, eyeing every corner of the room warily, hands balled into fists in his lap. At least if the thing showed back up, he’d be able to see it. 

John woke up again a few hours later and decided to get up and go out for “food or something.” He didn’t invite Dave along. Dave didn’t want to accompany him, anyway, given he was fairly sure he knew what John was really going to go do and he wanted no part of it. While he was gone, Dave did a couple laps around the entire house, even the basement (albeit only once), gun in hand and nerves half-frayed. He was fairly certain something was going to jump him, and maybe the most fucked-up part was that he was more concerned about his blood staining these people’s carpet than he was about actually getting killed. But nothing happened the whole time John was gone, and when he came back, things were relatively normal. John was clearly either overcaffeinated or on something, as he waltzed in with far more energy than he’d had before, chucking a Slim Jim at Dave before going off on some insane ramble about something-or-other he saw. Dave just let him chatter and pace around the room and found himself thinking, _at least we’re not hunting anything right now_ He eyed John with mostly apathy, just keeping an eye out should he get a shitty idea that he’d immediately want to follow through on, and chewed on the Slim Jim. Eventually, he was sure, John would wear himself out. Whether that’d happen in eight hours or eighteen, Dave didn’t know, but he wasn’t much of a stranger to babysitting John like this. That being said, Dave still mostly tuned out what he was saying—something about this being not so bad, fun even, or some other shit along those lines—because he wasn’t really looking to melt his brain today. If he were, he’d have gone along with John. 

John cooled down a few hours later, which was fortuitous, as that was when they were meant to leave. They took a solid half-hour or so to figure out their route, poring over the atlas over a couple beers until they got a decent itinerary planned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiiii sorry this update is late i was sick <3 im hoping to quicken the update-pace but uhh that might not happen.


	5. Strung Out Like Laundry On Every Line

They left that house with far fewer entities and bottles of booze than it had had when they arrived, and they’d refrained from buying too much while staying there to make the cash last just a little longer, helping themselves (a little) to the food left behind in the pantry and fridge. They stole a little bit of food from there, too, but still decided to stop at a local gas station both for fuel and for a little more food before they hit the road in the long-term again, headed for their next case. 

They sent Amy a postcard or two while they were traveling, took on a few more cases as the weather grew colder. Winter was creeping over autumn, and they did their best to pretend it wasn’t, even as the growing chill forced them to break out the light jackets they’d packed. Dave was pretty glad that they’d had the foresight to pack those. They did their best not to think of what the future had in store, focusing solely on the short-sighted goals of where their next case would be, where they needed to get a room at next, where their next meal was coming from. Lately, the Dumpsters had been seeming more and more appealing in comparison to the fear of getting caught shoplifting. That was something John tried to convince Dave would be no big deal, but this wasn’t Undisclosed. The judge wouldn’t roll his eyes and groan “Mr. Cheese, I am tired of seeing you in my court” before giving John whatever penalty would get him the hell out of there as fast as possible. Dave was pretty sure that with both their records, things would go south, fast, especially given that their car was stuffed to the gills with weapons. So he was careful, and he forced John to be careful too. To stay mostly out-of-sight and innocuous unless they were actively working a case.

Wouldn’t that become ironic.

* * *

John woke up one morning to sunlight streaming in the motel room’s windows and an empty bed. He was a little too groggy to really notice that second part; the one thought on his mind was _man, I need to piss_. So, with all the elegance of a drunk sloth, he crawled out from under the covers and shuffled to the bathroom, grimacing at how cold the tile was under his feet. Winter was in full swing, snow piled up everyfuckingwhere, ice on all the roads. Travel had gotten a little tough, but they were still okay. They’d packed winter coats and jeans. No snowboots or anything, but they didn’t often have to slog through it very often. He clicked on the bathroom light and was greeted by the sight of Dave in the bathtub. Fully clothed, one leg sticking out of it, the rest of him sort of folded up awkwardly in it, and sound asleep. John’s sleepy brain didn’t 100% process what he was seeing at first. He squinted, rubbed his eyes, then walked toward the tub a little hesitantly. He almost thought Dave might be dead, which was hard to tell at a distance given Dave’s usual pallor was pretty corpselike, and it didn’t get much easier with reduced distance. He inched closer, reaching out one hand to poke Dave’s cheek. It squished normally under his finger, and felt like warm, living flesh, which was reassuring. He reached a little further down to poke Dave’s neck, squinting again as he focused hard on finding a pulse. There was one, which, he should’ve figured, because Dave was snoring the whole time, but he _really_ wanted to make sure. Ordinarily, when presented with someone passed out in a bathtub, he would just do his business and leave them to sort their own shit out, but he had two exceptions to that: Dave, and weird circumstances. The first was mainly because when Dave passed out on the ground or in a weird position he’d wake up all sore and cranky and it was best to navigate him to a couch or a bed or at the very least a soft rug, to avoid dealing with a bitchy Dave in the morning. The second was because he was pretty used to weird shit at this point and he didn’t like to leave it lingering, if only because it had the potential to be exciting. So he shook Dave’s shoulder, gently, and said, “Hey, dude?” Dave groaned in that way he always did when he didn’t want to be woken and wasn’t awake enough yet to say so. John shook him a little firmer. “Buddy, you’re, uh, in the bathtub?” 

“Hnnwhuh?” Dave rolled over halfway, back bumping against the side of the tub, and grimaced, rubbing his forearm over his eyes. 

“Yeah, I dunno either.”

Dave opened his eyes, squinting around in blatant confusion, then asked, “How’d I get here?” 

“Took the words right out of my mouth,” John replied. “Did you get up to piss and get lost?” 

“No,” Dave mumbled, still confused. “I mean—I don’t think so? I don’t remember getting up at all.” 

John straightened back up, extending a hand to Dave, who took it gratefully. John helped him clamber out of the bathtub, and Dave paused for a moment to rub his neck, mumbling in pain, before John nudged him. “Get out, _I_ gotta piss.” 

Dave didn’t need to be told twice. He shuffled out in a bit of a zombielike manner, and John heard the bedsprings creak as he settled down again. John shook his head, entirely baffled. The only explanation he could come up with was sleepwalking, but that’d be new for Dave. John hadn’t ever known him to sleepwalk, not even a little. Sure, he could flail around or ‘sleep-fight’ sometimes (which was a whole other issue) but he never _got up and did shit_ before. New territory. He hoped it’d just be stupid, mundane, little shit like waking up in the bathtub.

Of course, he should have figured nothing with the two of them could be normal, even something as slightly-abnormal as suddenly-developed sleepwalking. It was mostly just harmless weird shit for a time, though; over the next few weeks, he woke up to Dave sleeping on the floor, the wrong way around in the bed (which was hilarious if unpleasant for the both of them), in a chair (upside-down, somehow), in the tub—one time he was even laying down curled up in the closet, and another time he ended up on the hood of the car—and all of that was fun and games up until one morning he woke up and Dave just wasn’t there. Not in the bathroom, nor the closet, neither _in_ nor _on_ the car. He didn’t panic right away; maybe Dave walked to the nearest 7/11 for some breakfast, or he went to fill the car up with gas, or maybe he went to fetch the morning newspaper or _who was John kidding he panicked almost immediately_. He checked his phone and saw, to his further concern, two missed calls from Dave, a half-hour apart. The last one was ten minutes ago. Baffled as to how he slept through that, John immediately dialled him and sat down on the bed, bouncing one leg with tense anxious energy. He glanced down, noted Dave’s shoes were still on the floor where he’d kicked them off last night, and felt a sickening feeling filling up his gut.

“Oh, hey, there you are,” Dave’s voice came through the phone.

John didn’t beat around the bush. “Where are you?” He tried to keep the alarm out of his tone as he bent down to put on his shoes.

“Uuuuhhhhh… I don’t know! Um,” there was an unpleasantly long pause before Dave said, “Oh, there’s a road sign… Washington Avenue?” 

“Where the fuck is that?” John mumbled, confused, then shook his head, standing up. “I’m coming to get you. But what the hell happened?” 

“I don’t know.” Dave sounded cold. John could hear him sniffle and his words were a little unsteady, like his teeth were chattering. It was snowing out, so that made sense. John bundled up hastily and booked it to the car as fast as he could while Dave kept talking. “I just—I woke up in, in like, a field? I don’t… remember how… What time is it? I didn’t think to check my phone.” 

John glanced to the car’s dash. “Uhhh, 10:47.” 

“Oh, shit. Huh.” 

“Yeah.” The car started and John put Dave on speaker so he could open his phone’s map and navigate to wherever the hell Washington Avenue was. “You still there?” 

“Mhm. Uh, I’m at the junction of—Washington, aaaand… Cherry Street. I’ve been walking down Washington, I think.” 

“Right. On my way.” And he was, driving a solid ten-or-more miles over the speed limit and trying very, very hard not to barrage Dave with a billion questions. The fact Dave sounded kind of out of it was further alarming. He just needed to get to wherever the hell it was he’d ended up and get him back to their room. He felt awful that neither call woke him up but at least he was up and about now. 

He located and drove up Washington pretty quickly. It wasn’t very far off from the motel room, but he drove for a good fifteen minutes up it before he spotted the familiar figure of Dave ambling his way down the street unsteadily. John pulled over beside Dave and Dave immediately fumbled with the passenger door, clumsily ripping it open before plunking into the seat. He was shivering hard, in just his shirt and jeans, both of which were more torn and dirty than when he’d gone to sleep. John eyed him in alarm. “Dude, what the hell?” 

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Dave managed through chattering teeth. He looked rattled and he practically curled up in a ball, rubbing his hands along his faintly-blue toes.

“How long were you out there?” 

“I don’t know. And I don’t know how I got there, but I… guess I sleep-walked.” He sounded even less certain than he looked, and twice as tired. He avoided looking at John and just stared out the windshield. 

“You _guess_ you sleep-walked?” John wasn’t about to let it go. 

“Fuck, dude,” Dave sighed shakily, shutting his eyes, fear bleeding through his words, “I don’t know. I don’t fucking know.” There was something he wasn’t telling John, but John didn’t know how to ask after it. 

So he changed the subject. “Well… you wanna go out for breakfast?” 

“We don’t have the money for that,” Dave pointed out wearily.

John sighed. He’d really been craving some shitty breakfast food from Denny’s or Waffle House or _literally anywhere_ for weeks now. “We could dine and dash.” Dave glared at him. “Okay, okay, _fine_.” He should’ve figured Dave wouldn’t spring for that. They weren’t at that level of desperation yet. 

Dave only got more and more laconic as the drive back to the motel went on. He barely could come up with any responses by the time they got back, and when they got in he just crawled back into bed and bundled up in all of the blankets. John left him to warm up, choosing to pack up their room on his own this time. He let Dave continue dozing when he went to 7/11 to get them something to eat, and only woke him up after coming back. 

“You alright?” He asked as Dave, in a bundle of blankets, sat up. 

“Yeah,” Dave mumbled, shifting again to rub at his feet. “My toes might be a little frostbitten but I think it’s fine.” 

“I’ll drive today, then,” John settled in next to him, handing him the open bag of Donettes he’d snagged. He kept the coffee he’d gotten in his other hand. 

“Thank you.” 

John made an affirmative noise in the back of his throat, a ‘no-problem’ kind of sound, then said, “Next case, we’re probably gonna need snowboots for.” 

Dave paused mid-chew, brow furrowing. “…Do we have money for that?” 

“Nope.” John didn’t tell him that he’d had to steal the mini-donuts. “We’ll have to do without. Dude wants us to search the woods near his house for some kind of a monster, though. He’s been seeing shit, and he’s _pretty_ sure he’s not just going all Jack Torrance in his cabin.”

Dave rubbed his eyes. “Great. Part monster-hunt part sanity-check.” 

“Is our work ever anything else?” John reached over and took another mini-donut. “Anyway, he’s another dude with a guest room, so, maybe we can borrow his snowboots or something?” Dave grunted quietly in response. John pushed the coffee at him. “Here. Warm up a bit.” 

“Thanks.” 

* * *

The cabin was not exactly the quaint-but-lovely place John had been picturing, nor was it the ramshackle murder shed Dave anticipated. It was an older home, small, but well-looked-after, and the man who owned the place came out to greet them the moment their engine stopped. He had a Boston accent of some intensity, Dave noted when he greeted them with, “Are you two John and Dave?” 

“Yep!” John called back with an affable smile. His breath fogged from his mouth with every word, light grey clouds drifting into the pitch-black trees all around them, as he continued, “You’re Jared, right?” 

“Yeah, c’mon in.” 

The interior was well-kept, simple. The home of a man who didn’t want for much, and maybe was used to having to get up and go with little-to-no warning. The furniture was bare-minimum, but not in the cheap manner a lot of Dave’s home furnishings had been. It was selectively bare-minimum, high-end bare-minimum. Designed to keep a homely appearance with little trace of a homely vibe. It made Dave uncomfortable, but he didn’t say anything about it. He let John do the talking, as per usual, and while the man—Jared—had been a little prickly at first, distrustful, by the time he’d explained what he’d been dealing with and John had come up with enough bullshit to placate him (“Ah, yes, we took a case like this last week, it’ll be no problem” “We’ll run that through our database and see if anything comes up” “I’m sure this won’t be difficult at all, we’re professionals, you know”) he’d warmed up to them. Enough so, at the very least, to show them to the guest room, and tell them he’d be willing to accompany them out there. This was something John delicately shot down immediately. They didn’t tend to like third-wheels tagging along, and it wasn’t going to make their job any easier. Thus, they ended up slogging through the snow all by themselves the moment the sun went down. Unfortunately, the man hadn't any boots they could borrow, either.

“This sucks,” Dave huffed, shivering despite his coat. 

“Yeah.” John, for once, didn’t have anything witty or cheery to say in response; he was fucking cold, too, balling his hands into fists and blowing on them. His nose was numb and he kept sniffling. “I know.” 

“At this point I almost _want_ some fuckin’ thing to attack us just so we can get the hell outta here already.” He continued griping, rolling his shoulders. John laughed a little. 

The tree branches above them were barren, black twisting forms, hampered with snow, and every now and then a gust of wind would blow a light dusting of snow off the topmost branches, falling to the branches below or onto their heads. Fortunately, they were both wearing hats, so they barely noticed. Dave glanced up and noted that, were it not for the snow crowning nearly every branch, he’d have no clue where the trees ended and the sky began. Everything here was pitch-black. The moon wasn’t out. He kept the flashlight trained in front of them for the most part, sometimes sweeping across the trees beside them just out of paranoia. The woods were quiet save for the occasional owl hoot. 

Until they heard the snow crunch oddly and both froze, glancing first to each other then to what they thought was the source of the noise, which ended up being two completely different directions. 

“Where was that?” John hissed. 

“I don’t fuckin’ know,” Dave murmured back, eyed scanning the trees expectantly. 

“Ghetto blaster time?” John suggested. 

Dave nodded, passing the flashlight to John so he had a hand free to turn the little stereo on. He hefted it onto his shoulder and they kept walking as “Here I Go Again” started blaring. Dave was starting to get a little tired of that one but not tired enough to immediately change it. 

They trudged further into the woods, buffeted by winds and lightly powdered with snow from the branches above—it wasn’t actively snowing at the moment, thankfully—talking a little but spending more effort keeping their eyes keenly trained on the dark woods around them. They weren’t altogether sure what they were looking for, anyways, as the man hadn’t had much description for them other than a vague humanoid shape that tracked him while he was hunting, and a vague sense of unease in some patches of the forest. Dave, who always felt uneasy, was going to rely on John to tell him if he’d started feeling uneasy. That, of course, would likely be a too-little-too-late sort of moment, but it would be something at least. 

Then movement caught his eye.

“Stop,” Dave hissed, sticking one arm out in front of John, eyes locked on a mysterious dark patch ahead of them. John froze, bumping into Dave’s arm. “What’s that? Dead ahead.” 

John shined the flashlight out, pulling the pistol out of his belt warily. When the light passed over the dark shape, it disappeared, but the moment the light was off it again Dave would swear he saw some sort of form. “I don’t see anything,” John replied. 

Dave did. He crept forward, grasping the boombox tightly, pulling the knife from his own waistband, knuckles white with the force of his grip. It seemed to dissolve when he got closer, though, and he stopped dead in his tracks, eyes scanning around. “Something was there,” he said with firm conviction. John didn’t reply. Privately, he was wondering if Dave had been off his meds for a little too long. “I’m pretty fuckin’ sure.” 

“It’s too fucking cold out here,” John said finally. “I don’t even wanna try fighting this thing with my hands this numb.” 

Dave couldn’t help but agree as he stepped back, still warily eyeing the forest. He was tired from traveling, too, and could really do with at least a nap. “Think he’d be pissed?” 

“Even if he is, who the fuck else is he gonna call for some weird shit in the woods?” John shrugged. Dave still hesitated so John tried another angle. “We’ll do better work after we’ve slept. If he asks we can just say that.” 

Dave nodded. That worked well enough for him.

* * *

John lay there quietly, listening to Dave snoring and the creak of the old cabin shifting as wind ripped along the outside of it. They were bundled up in a quilt, lying on a rickety guest bed made of once-solid wood that creaked with nearly every movement, so John kept as still as he could, facing the wall, back barely brushing Dave’s. It wasn’t particularly drafty in the room but he appreciated Dave’s warmth anyways, if only because it affirmed the guy was still there. 

That morning had scared him. He was _still_ kicking himself for not waking up earlier. For not waking up when Dave left. How the hell was it that a probably-200-something-pound guy could sneak out of bed like that? While sleepwalking, no less? He couldn’t imagine Dave was any less clumsy when he was still technically asleep. And how the hell did he walk so far? What was he not telling John? What the hell had _happened_ to him out there? 

John shimmied backwards a little, pressing his back into Dave. He kept staring at the wall, though, those questions still rattling around in his head, breeding others. He couldn’t find any answers and he found himself growing increasingly paranoid that it would happen again. What would he do, if he woke up to Dave lost somewhere in the woods? What if he didn’t have his phone with him that time? John glanced to the nightstand. Both their phones sat on it. He wouldn’t, if he left as he was, as John assumed he tended to. Would John be able to find him? What if he was out there too long, and he died in the cold? What if John slept through **that**? _What if John never even found him?_

By that last question, John was practically trembling. He felt sick at the thought and pressed further back into Dave before suddenly deciding that wasn’t enough. He shuffled forward again to give himself enough space, then gingerly rolled over and clung to Dave instead, taking fistfuls of his shirt; Dave snored on, clueless. It helped John, though. If he had a fucking deathgrip on Dave’s shirt there was _no_ way he could get up and go somewhere without prying John off, which would absolutely wake him up. He knew he was breaking some part of their bro code, given they were practically spooning now, but he didn’t care. Dave could smack the hell out of him in the morning if he felt like it, and John wouldn’t give a damn, because he’d be there to do it, and that was all that mattered. He pressed his forehead to Dave’s back and shut his eyes finally. 

John woke with a fright to Dave clumsily trying to peel his hands off the back of his shirt, and he flinched so hard it startled Dave. “Shit! Sorry. I just needed to piss.” 

John let go, pulled his hands to his own chest and shut his eyes again if only to avoid seeing whatever look was on Dave’s face. He couldn’t imagine it’d be a particularly positive one. Sunlight was streaming in the one window above the bed; it was morning, and they’d made it through the night. “S’fine. Sorry.” 

He expected Dave to say something a bit snarky about it, but instead he just felt the bed shift, heard its frame creak, then felt the mattress rise as Dave got up. Every floorboard squeaked, and the door groaned, and then every floorboard down the hall cried out as if protesting Dave’s footfalls. At least John could keep track of Dave that way, he supposed. His heart was still racing, and he took quiet deep breaths to calm it again. No way he could go back to sleep, but he didn’t really want to get up yet. After a few minutes he heard squeaking down the hall, then protesting of the door, then musical floorboards, and finally a little “ugh, oof” as Dave clambered over the foot of the bed clumsily. The mattress dipped again as Dave settled in with a deep sigh that brushed some of John’s hair off his forehead. John cracked an eye open to find Dave staring blankly at the wall over John’s shoulder like he was too tired to even think, but some life entered his eyes as they flicked to John’s face. “What’s the game plan for today?” He asked tiredly. 

“Not sure. Dude usually sees shit when it’s dark, ’cause, y’know, _of course,_ but if there’s some shit out there, _we_ could maybe find it in the daytime.” John rubbed his face and yawned. “And it’ll be warmer.” 

Dave nodded, then sat up and stretched. “Alright. Let’s get going.” 

* * *

It was still cold, even with the sun out. Dave drew his coat closer around himself, zipping it up all the way, and John was shivering a bit. “Blurgh, this fuckin _sucks_ ,” John grumbled. 

“I think I said that last night,” Dave quipped. 

“Still stands.” 

“We gotta head south after this,” Dave continued. “And indoors. Anybody in Florida saying they’ve got ghosts? _Anybody_?” 

John snickered. “I think in Florida people deal with their ghosts by shootin’ ’em, dude.” 

Dave snorted. “God, I wish that worked.” He hefted The Bible Belter, swinging it aimlessly just to have something to do. Now that it was daylight, he could see the trees more clearly, but it didn’t make them much less scary; they were still quite densely-packed with only a bit of shrubbery, and the wood was dark enough it all seemed to blend together. It wasn’t actively snowing, again, not even a light sprinkling, but storm clouds were slowly creeping in from the east, so that wouldn’t last. 

“Man, y’know what place would be great to deghost right now?” John piped up suddenly. Dave gave him an inquiring look so he continued, “Disney World.” 

Dave laughed. “Pretty sure they’d call Marconi, not _us_.” 

“You don’t know, maybe they’re cheap-ass bastards when it comes to ghost issues.” 

“Doubt it.” 

“Lemme dream, will you?” 

“Fine, fine,” Dave relented good-naturedly. They fell into a comfortable silence again, walking along together. John could almost kid himself that he was just taking a nice little woodland stroll with his best friend and their guns. He watched the breath fog out of his mouth, drifting up into the pale sky, and wondered privately if Dave was feeling the same sort of serenity he felt cloaked in at the moment. He doubted it, but he hoped at some point maybe they could be on the same page. Hopefully in a warmer season where they could take their time without fear of freezing to death.

Something changed. John noticed Dave’s mood shift before he noticed anything else, but by his perception there was nothing else _to_ notice. “Wait,” Dave froze, grip tightening on the Bible Belter, eyes trained right on where he thought he’d just seen some movement. “What was that?”

John indulged him, freezing as well, eyes searching for anything Dave might’ve seen. He couldn’t find anything. “I… don’t know,” he replied slowly. “I didn’t see anything.” 

Dave didn’t really acknowledge what he’d said. “You think maybe this guy’s been seeing shadowmen?”

“Description didn’t really match.”

There was a long, long pause. They kept walking. John eyed Dave out of the corner of his vision, in a manner Dave wouldn’t notice, and, after enough time to gather his courage, John decided to speak again. “You’ve been super jumpy lately,” he started, delicately as he could, “Are you okay?” 

“Yeah,” Dave lied easily, white-knuckle-gripping the Bible Belter. “I’m good.” 

John didn’t press him any further.

They found nothing that day or that night, and turned in sometime around midnight, bundling up in the quilt on that tiny bed again. It was absolutely freezing-cold in the room that night so Dave didn’t bat an eye at John pressing in as close as possible to him. The next morning felt much the same, both of them squinting in the bright sunlight, likely to be sun-blind for the rest of the day if not the rest of the week. They were quiet this time, until Dave sneezed. “Ugh.” He shook his head, grimacing. 

John side-eyed him. “You better not be getting sick.” 

“I’m fine.” Dave sniffled, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “It’s allergies. Or the weather. Or something. It’s fine.”

Bookending a statement with any phrase implying everything fine was, of course, the biggest red flag that everything was not in fact fine, but John didn’t feel like starting an argument, so he just silently took note of the fact things were definitely not fine, or at least they were about to be less than fine, and moved on. 

It was close to dawn the next day when they finally found what they were looking for. Dave spotted it first again, freezing on the spot and grabbing John by the shoulder to stop him as well, as something stepped out from behind a tree a little ways away—far enough away that it wasn’t like the thing was popping out to yell ‘boo!’, but more like it just happened to step into their field of view without seeing them. They froze. It froze.

It seemed roughly humanoid, made of gnarled, dark tree bark, and it had no neck, just trunk stretching up into a hollow of sorts that held one glowing reddish-pink eyeball, which was glaring directly into Dave’s eyes. He stiffened, startled, as it skittered forward on four legs, long arms brushing against the snow on the ground. Once Dave realized it was advancing he stumbled backward, hefting The Bible Belter and, of course, clicking the boombox on. The second music started blaring from it, the creature cringed, hissed, lifted its long-fingered hands to cover its ears. It didn’t really have a face, but Dave felt it resentfully glare at him anyways. John hefted the axe and they exchanged that look of _well, here we go again_ before rushing the thing while it was still distracted by its pain.

Its claws flailed valiantly but in vain against the both of them, the axe in John’s hands making short work of its limbs in a few frantic, violent swings, while Dave did his best to beat the shit out of what he assumed was its face. There was a lot of screeching, limb-flailing, the sounds of chopping wood, but eventually the two were triumphant and the thing lay in a twitching pile of wood at their feet before, after a few more chops from John, finally stilling. He straightened up with a wheeze, wiping his brow. They stood panting for a moment, staring at it.

“Think burning this would be bad?” John wondered, lifting a chunk of wood, turning it over in his hands. Now that he could see it more closely, he could see bizarre knots and whorls in its texture, curling around little dark patches—it looked like drawings of eyes. Seemingly-infinite amounts of eyes. The closer he looked the more he felt drawn in until suddenly he realized he was dizzy, and Dave was saying something, and the next thing he knew Dave was holding him by the armpits and trying to keep his ass from hitting the snow. He’d dropped the chunk he was holding at some point but it left his hands oddly stained. 

“Dude, what the fuck?” Dave said, and John felt a little bit of relief at finally being able to process sound again. 

“I have no idea,” he replied, struggling back upright again. He still felt a little woozy, but he shook his head to clear it. “Don’t fuckin’ look _right_ _at it,_ I guess.” 

“I say we burn it just to get rid of it,” Dave replied. “C’mon, help me pick it all up.” 

* * *

They brought it back, armload by armload, to Jared, who seemed skeptical of the wood being of monstrous origin until he did the same thing John did. Fortunately he was a little smarter than John, and tossed the wood away the second he started to feel strange, but he was pale and almost _skittish_ after. They built a bonfire in the middle of the guy’s backyard, lit the wood ablaze (after a lot of trying; Jared pointed out that if they had _just_ killed the thing the wood wouldn’t be very dry, but he shut up after John rebutted “Well, you wanna keep this shit around ‘til it is?”) and then had to move to stand upwind of it as the burning produced a thick, almost tarlike smoke that had Dave coughing hard enough John genuinely considered going to fetch him his inhaler, even though Dave rarely used it in winter. He recovered, though, and waved the concern off with a grimace. 

The wood melted as it burned, or at least seemed to, turning slowly into a pile of black sludge. It wasn’t sap, else that would have burned; it stuck around, like ash, thick and slow-moving but slowly expanding out, melting the snow. “Yeah, that’s gonna kill the grass,” John remarked, tapping his cigarette with one finger. He’d lit one up because this situation apparently didn’t have enough smoke going on already.

“So long as it doesn’t kill _me_ ,” Jared replied gruffly. 

“Wouldn’t step in it if I were you,” Dave shuffled back a little bit, warily eyeing the goop. He didn’t want that shit on his shoes, he had enough problems as it was. 

Jared stepped back as well. He folded his arms, staring directly into the fire for a moment before saying, “Well, thank you. I… I have no idea how you did it, but I’m grateful.” 

“Just our job, sir,” John replied dramatically, and Dave shut his eyes to restrain an eyeroll.


	6. Can We Talk About This Later? Your Voice Is Driving Me Insane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from this point on, things begin to get A Little Darker for a time, tho no warnings per se apply to this chapter.  
> ..i think this chapter isn't very good, but the ones that'll come after get better, i promise

Of course, as was the way with these things, two days after Dave first started sniffling and coughing, John did, as well. They weren’t going to be able to escape each other, after all, so it was inevitable they’d share germs. He just hoped they’d both be rid of it around the same time, just as when they’d caught it, so they wouldn’t spend the winter playing Disease Tennis with each other. 

A week or so after the cabin in the woods case, Amy pestered Dave into letting her send them a package. He finally caved when John told him due to the way things were lining up they were going to be staying in one motel for a week after they finished the case they were currently on, giving her plenty of time to get that together. She’d been worried about the both of them, given they were both sick, and no amount of Dave telling her they were fine would alleviate the worry, so she had of course resolved to send them a care package. 

They still had to finish this case first, though.

John sniffled reflexively, then cleared his throat, making a disgusted grimace before speaking in a voice that crackled with how sore his throat was. “I was hoping this shit would be easy.” 

“Yeah, well, it never is,” Dave coughed. “Did you see where it… uh… _ran_ to?”

“Nope.” 

They’d been chasing an obnoxiously-small creature around this house for a few hours now. It was the last thing they’d had to attend to, after killing the bigger version that was either its mother or its sibling. The problem was, it proved to be remarkably quicker than its bigger relative, and it quickly skittered out of sight only to dash from some unseen hiding-place to chomp their ankles before hiding somewhere else. Dave was already limping just a little. 

There was a burst of sound, then, from under the sofa they were passing by, the telltale noise of tentacles slapping on the hardwood floor. Dave, not keen on going to the hospital to get his hamstring reattached, sprang back as the little creature erupted from under the couch, covered in dust. It had a mandible of sorts, not quite like a bug mandible, but more like a crab claw with a mouth-hole in it. Its body was soft, its eyes beady like a shark’s—all six of them—moving by tentacles protruding from every side of the thing. He brought down the axe just shy of the thing’s main body, chopping off several tentacles, which writhed like angry spaghetti. The creature shrieked and they both winced at the shrillness of the sound. 

“ _Fuck_ , I missed,” Dave growled as the thing vanished again. 

“Not quite,” John gestured to the still-writhing-in-agony recently-displaced tentacles. “Maybe that’ll slow it down?” 

“Doubt it,” Dave replied, and then he started to say something else but more coughing choked him. He shook his head, frustrated. “Dammit, man. We gotta get this thing. I’m tired of it.” 

“Me too,” John replied wearily. “Hey, what if we just fuckin’ leave it? I mean, we’ve already done a lot. Surely they can smash the shit out of this thing at some point, right?” 

Dave was tempted. Very, very tempted. They’d done a lot of work, being sick already had him less energetic than usual, and he really would like to just leave this stupid house, hit up a drive-thru, and pass out in the hotel room after shoving a burger down his throat. He didn’t care, he realized, about whether or not these people’s picture-perfect (well, it was before they showed up) house was fully eradicated of monsters. He just simply didn’t. “Sure,” he rasped. “Why the fuck not?” The people had already paid. They never got called twice to the same place, probably because of who they were, so what did it matter? 

He felt only the barest twinge of guilt as they stepped out the front door, and it was quickly dispelled by a coughing fit that seemed to knock the emotions right out of him; he flopped into the passenger seat and sagged wearily, dumping the bloodstained axe in the backseat. John sat down in the driver’s seat with a similar lack of energy, heaving a tired sigh that, of course, devolved into a coughing spell of his own. It always sounded bad to Dave, worse than it actually was. He chalked it up to just how much John smoked but still, it made Dave eye him worriedly out of the corner of his vision, some part of him at least somewhat convinced the guy was about to start choking. John never seemed to notice. The car started up with a rattling wheeze, sounding just as sickly as the both of them, but it’d been doing that longer than they had, so they didn’t pay it any mind. 

* * *

On the third day after that case, they returned to the motel to find there was a package waiting for them, one they immediately knew the origins of and were extremely excited about. 

John jogged to their room, then paused at the door, looking back to Dave, who wasn’t keen on jogging. “Dude, c’mon!” 

“I’m not—”

“Dave.” 

He sighed and lightly power-walked to catch up, making no comment to John, who grinned a little triumphantly as he opened the door. They both sat down on the bed, John eagerly fishing a knife out of his pocket to start slashing at the box’s tape haphazardly, narrowly missing his own fingers.

“Stop it, you’re gonna cut your hands off,” Dave said, snagging the knife out of John’s hands before he could even try to keep it away from Dave. He surrendered the package to Dave, as well, pouting a little bit—he loved opening gifts but he couldn’t blame the guy for taking it away from him. It was, technically, Dave’s. Also he was definitely on the verge of an unfortunate accident.

Dave carefully cut open the box, cutting away from him, as he was keen to point out to John. John was keen to smack his arm lightheartedly for it before walking to the bathroom for a moment. He came back as Dave got it open, chucking the knife aside and ripping it open with his hands.

“Siiiick,” John grinned, flopping down next to Dave. “Girlfriend mail. What’d she send you?” 

“Bunch of food for the both of us, batteries for the blaster and flashlights, a bottle of cold medicine,” Dave replied, tilting the box so John could see in as he pawed through, “and a note.” He lifted it and cleared his throat before reading. 

“Hey, you two! I know travel is tough but I’m so proud of you for what you’re doing. I love hearing from you and I’ve loved getting your postcards. I put together some stuff I think might help you, and I really hope it does. I hope you feel better soon, too. I love you both—” 

...There was a part labeled “for Dave’s eyes only, John, don’t you dare read this,” so he skimmed over that part, and continued after, “To the both of you, again.”

“Good luck with your next case. Keep me updated on how it goes! I can’t wait to see you, too. I miss you. A lot. So call me more often, darnit. Love you! Kisses!”

“Aww. How sweet,” John crooned only a touch mockingly, and Dave shoved him gently in return. He lowered the note again, putting it on the nightstand, mentally resolving to keep hold of it, take good care of it, and reread it next time travel was starting to fuck with him. He glanced back over to see John grinning fondly, and he spoke genuinely this time, “She’s awesome.” 

“Yeah.” Dave smiled ever so slightly, putting the cardboard box on the floor. If they stretched what she’d given them, they could even maybe actually save up some money, from not having to buy food. That was the real gift, and he knew it, and he knew that was at least in part why she’d done it; if she sent them money outright, they (or, Dave, at least) would feel bad about it. 

Man, he loved her.

That night, Dave curled up, sweater in-hand, and buried his face in it, shutting his eyes. It smelled like her. His grip on it tightened slightly; he could almost kid himself into thinking she really was there and it was such a comfort to him. He missed her terribly, terribly enough he could cry, but he wouldn’t, because John was right behind him, and he couldn’t bear the idea of being caught crying. So he lay there silently, restrained, a tight little ball of so many emotions he couldn’t even begin to try and sort out. For once John didn’t lean back into Dave and instead surreptitiously scooted away, giving him space, fully aware Dave would’ve preferred to be alone just then. But John was tired, didn’t want to go out for once, and he wasn’t going to go sleep in the car. He’d be nice but he wouldn’t break his back over it. He fell asleep pretty quickly, anyways, so technically, Dave _was_ alone. 

* * *

Thanks to the medicine, or maybe just to enough time passing, they both managed to kick the cold they’d caught, though Dave still had a persistent cough that he adamantly insisted was ‘fine.’ It had taken all of the medicine to get to this point but that was fine—made for one less thing to carry. The days got colder as winter crept over autumn, fully engulfing it, all leaves gone from the trees no matter how south they went. And they did try to go as south as possible, despite being at the whim of the weird shit happening around America that found its way into John’s e-mail inbox and website forums. 

Work was starting to dry up, though. Christmas on the horizon reminded Dave both of time’s passage, his own uselessness—he couldn’t even get Amy a gift this year, how horrible of a boyfriend was he?—and of the fact that he couldn’t imagine going through someone’s house looking for monsters while their Christmas tree was up. Things were going to go bad, he just knew it, instinctively, with that same instinct he’d always felt. He didn’t tell John this time, though. Things were growing tense between them. While the money they’d saved in that brief time where they were just eating the food Amy had sent them was a godsend, John’s wasteful habits hadn’t exactly vanished, and it was starting to really piss Dave off. For once in his life though he worked to keep the peace between them, feeling certain the irritation was one-sided—because how could John see flaws in his own behavior when he was always so ready to justify them?—and not wanting to lose the one guy he had left. 

If Dave had more of a capacity to read people—to read John—then maybe he’d have seen through that eternal smile a little easier. The only thing he could sense was that their banter held a little bit of venom every now and again. More likely to dissolve into stupid little fights over even stupider little things. He couldn’t even see the cracks in John’s mask yet. Which wasn’t unusual for Dave; he was nothing if not bad at understanding people and while he’d had more time to observe and understand John it didn’t render him perfect at reading the man by any means, and the fact that everything was so strange and different now, their lives so chaotic, put him at a disadvantage. 

John, however, had noticed Dave withdrawing just a little bit more every day. It was so small a difference he wasn’t even sure if Dave himself noticed it, but it was starting to bother John. A lot. And he couldn't get Dave to respond sometimes unless he decided to be just a little bit of a prick about it, which he wasn’t opposed to doing. He knew it wasn’t a real solution, but it was something, it could do in the meantime until he found a real solution. So long as he just kept Dave talking, responding. A silent Dave was a dangerous one. A silent Dave was one he had to keep a very close eye on and he didn’t always feel capable of that, so he did everything he could to keep the guy talking, even if that talking was telling him to fuck off. It seemed to be working, if only just a little. Probably just slowing the road to the inevitable. John was content with that. Maybe along the way he’d be able to find a real solution; it was all just buying time. 

He slammed the car door behind him, because if you didn’t slam that door these days it wouldn’t properly close, and walked around the front of the car to join Dave stepping out of the driver’s side. “So!” He clapped his reddened hands together and wished not for the first time that he’d remembered to bring gloves on this foolhardy escapade, “This is it.”

“According to your directions, yeah,” Dave replied in a bit of flat annoyance. 

The building seemed abandoned. Not just in the sense it seemed quiet and empty, it looked like nobody had done any upkeep for years. Some windows were covered in plastic bags. Graffiti tags had gone unwashed for god only knows how long. The local homeless probably knew it quite well, Dave guessed. 

Supposedly, it was in the process of being restored from the inside-out to be used as an office complex, but the construction had hit a bit of a snag when a mysterious invisible entity started chucking bricks and other rocks at the workers. And it wasn’t a playful toss, either. Some guy had already gotten fatally brained and another three had broken noses and/or jaws. Serious business. No one could see the perpetrator when it happened—all of those surviving had reported the objects simply floating and flying vindictively of their own accord. The activity spanned three floors and they were going to have to do their best to figure out if this was a ghost or an unseeable-to-anyone-not-on-the-Sauce monster without getting killed by it.

Dave wished he’d brought a hard hat.

John shouldered the front door open easily. It had been vaguely blocked by some bricks stacked behind it but it was already left ajar, likely thanks to someone else passing through; despite it being daylight outside the lack of windows in the inside (past a certain point, anyway) rendered it dark and ominous. Dave led, flashlight in hand—John held one as well, and used it to check behind them every now and again. They were running low on batteries; it was smarter to only use one at a time for the most part. 

The elevator wasn’t in use, for obvious reasons, and, obnoxiously, the weird brick-throwing bullshit activity was on the fifth-to-seventh floors. Dave was wheezing by the time they’d reached the seventh floor, knees absolutely killing him, grumbling complaints between coughing fits as they started down the first hall. They managed to keep quiet for the first few corridors; they were half-demolished, bricks laying about, some still only partway disassembled with crumbly stacks of bricks rising up to their knees. It was weird to see a space like this half-gutted. Dave found his eyes scanning every detail for any sign of danger. He wasn’t put any more at ease when they reached a less-destroyed patch of hallway, but he’d caught his breath by then. 

“Come out, come out, wherever you are, shitbird!” John suddenly yelled, startling Dave. “We know you fuckin’, throw bricks at people up here, c’mon! Hit me with one!”

Dave grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him back, through a nearby doorway. It was a well-timed yank, as well, as moments later, a brick sailed past the door frame. “Are you fuckin’ nuts? I’m not hauling your dumbass to a hospital for a broken nose today.” 

Another brick sailed by as John turned to respond to Dave, a little annoyed, “I would’ve ducked!” 

“Sure.” 

A third brick whacked the door frame and they flinched. “His aim’s gettin’ better.” John bent down to pick up the brick, then, as quickly as he could, leaned back around the doorway to throw it as hard as he could. They didn’t hear any impact. “Either he’s real far away or this is a ghost,” John decided. Dave yanked him back into the room again shortly before another brick slammed into the doorframe. “How are you so good at figurin’ out when he’s gonna throw that shit?” 

“I’m not. You’re just stupid.” Dave shouldered past John, crouching down to peer into the hall with the flashlight. He couldn’t see anything for a moment, just an empty long-ass hall…and then he saw something step around the end of the hallway. 

It looked bizarre. Like a Roswell alien but stretched out, alarmingly—one of those little rubber alien toys that’s kinda sticky and you can stretch the hell out of it, but this thing was stuck at maximum tension. Legs too long, torso too skinny, one singular arm—which was, of course, holding one big-ass rock—stretching nearly to the floor. Its head was too elongated, eyes wide and pitch-black. And then it _smiled_ , and nearly the whole of its face split apart to reveal alarmingly human teeth, but far too many of them, and they were all too wide, which was further unsettling on so narrow a face. It hefted the rock. Dave threw himself back from the doorway so quickly he practically tumbled back, nearly knocking John over. “Holy shit,” he blurted. The rock slammed into the door frame where his face had just been and he flinched, lightly showered in wood splinters. 

“What? What’d you see?” John braced Dave, helped him stand again, sounding extremely excited. 

“Nightmare E.T.,” Dave replied. “It’s a monster, not a ghost.”

“Cool, that means we can just shoot it, right?” John fumbled for a moment, pulled the pistol out of his waistband. 

“Probably. Don’t get hit. I mean it, we’re _not_ goin’ to a hospital today.”

“Don’t be stupid, Dave. I’m not gonna get hit.” 

* * *

Half an hour later, they exited the building, John wearing both their coats because his shirt was balled up against his free-bleeding nose, glaring ahead and ignoring the slew of “I told you so”s from Dave. The Nightmare E.T. hadn’t been impervious to bullets, thankfully, so it only took a shot or two to kill the thing—they left the body there, what normal people couldn’t see wouldn’t hurt them—but of course, the duo as of late had been plagued, as it were, with bad luck. There were no exceptions, it seemed, to the ways in which things could go wrong. 

Once back in the car, able to snag a different coat from the backseat, and moving again, Dave found his empathy returning to him. They were quiet for the first fifteen-or-so minutes, both shivering silently in their seats, John readjusting the shirt in his hands every now and then. They were halfway to the point they needed to reach—the foreman himself had been the one to hire them, they had to talk to him again to get the other half of their pay—when Dave finally asked, softly, “Is your nose broken?” 

“Dunno. It doesn’t feel like it, but maybe.” John didn’t take the cloth from his face. “It’s still bleeding, though.” 

Dave sighed and then, involuntarily, coughed for a few minutes. He shook his head and signed again. They probably couldn’t afford going to a hospital. Could you DIY fixing a broken nose? He’d have to check when they had Wi-Fi again. 

They were quiet for the rest of the drive. John’s nose stopped bleeding eventually; he gingerly pulled the shirt away from his face and pulled down the sun-shield to look at himself in the mirror, examining his nose. It was definitely broken. It looked pretty fucked-up, bent strangely right along the scar he had tracing across the bridge. He frowned. Last time he’d broken his nose, he’d had to go to the ER to get it reset. He didn’t know how to do that. He was pretty sure Dave didn’t either, plus, they’d had to put some metal-and-cotton thing over his nose, too. They for sure didn’t have that, but then again, that thing had fallen off or something after a drunken bender and his nose ended up fine, so maybe he didn’t really need it. 

They pulled up to a stop outside the construction company’s main office. It was really a trailer in an empty lot in the middle of some new development, but the sign out front claimed it to be the central office, so neither of them were going to question it. “At least your busted-ass nose will be good proof we ran into the thing,” Dave said as he turned the car off. 

John snickered. “Yeah.” 

The first thing the foreman said upon seeing them cross the threshold into the thankfully-warm trailer was “Didja get it?” He was sitting at his desk and stood once they opened the door; there was a second guy sitting beside him, reclining in an office chair, who eyed them curiously.

“Yep.” Dave replied. 

John waved the bloody shirt with a grin. “Fucker broke my nose. You weren’t kiddin’.”

The foreman whistled, picking an envelope up off his desk and walking around it, approaching the two of tem. “Damn, buddy. That’s rough.” 

“I can fix that for ya,” the second man spoke up, slowly getting out of his chair. 

“What, really?” John was caught off-guard for once. The foreman handed the envelope to Dave, who took it with a polite nod.

“Used to be a medic for an underground boxin’ ring. ‘Til it got busted, anyway. C’mere, I got this.” 

Dave didn’t particularly find this man very trustworthy but John, ever eager to display a misplaced faith in humanity, sauntered over like it was no big deal. “Damn, really? That sounds cool as hell.”

“It was. Stand still.” Before John could say anything else, the man stuck a pencil in each of his nostrils, then reached up and, with some strange little maneuver of his fingers, snapped what Dave assumed was John’s nose-bone right back into place. John, to his credit, only yelped once, a sharp and quick noise of surprise. “Lucky you,” the guy said, pulling the pencils out of John’s nose, “It was a pretty clean break. Easy fix.” 

“That felt weird as fuck.” John replied. 

“Hold still again.” The man proceeded to tape a cotton ball to either side of John’s nose, which looked ridiculous and likely wouldn’t help much. “There. Don’t fuck it up, now.” 

“Thanks, dude, seriously.” 

“Think nothin’ of it. Thanks for takin’ out that whatever-it-was that was throwin’ bricks at people.”

“Just our job,” John replied dramatically with a roll of his shoulders and an overconfident please-tell-me-I’m-a-hero grin. Dave rolled his eyes. 

“Hate to say it, but we’ve gotta hit the road again,” Dave cut in, thoroughly wanting this social interaction to be over with. “Still got a ways to go to our next job.” 

John shot him a slightly annoyed look—these people were friendly, he hadn’t had a friendly conversation just for the sake of conversation in forever—but Dave wasn’t lying, they had a potential case lined up a state over and the faster they got there the less time the guy had to change his mind about seeking their help. They needed money bad enough to sprint for it these days. “Yeah, he’s right. Great talkin’ to ya, though.” 

“Safe travels,” were the words that followed them out the door. Dave walked briskly to the car, silently grumpy about how goddamned _cold_ it was getting to be out here. The afternoon was getting long in the tooth now; evening had settled around the far edges of the horizon, the sun slowly creeping towards the west, and they were going to be driving into it. 

“Dude didn’t fuck up your nose, did he?” Dave asked once they were back in the car.

“Nah,” John slammed the door shut. “Feels fine.”

“Good.” 

* * *

They’d just passed the border into the next state when they had to turn in for the night. It was simply the easiest option; there was an exit off the highway right past the border with some shitty motels and a gas station or two—one of those towns that really isn’t a town, just seemed to be composed entirely of what you’d need on the tenth hour of your road trip—and it was the only one for a helluva long time. Longer than Dave would’ve been able to stay awake for. So they chose a random hole-in-the-wall motel complex, rented a room, and went to crash for the night.

Except John wasn’t really in the mood to sleep. Something had been bothering him for a little while now and while he was getting a new shirt and a hoodie to sleep in he’d finally just had enough.

“Dude, I hate to say it, but, we smell like shit, bro.” John dumped the jacket back on the bed, openly frustrated. “Everything in this bag smells like sweat. I smell like sweat. I think the very air around us smells like sweat.” 

Dave, unmoved and exhausted, waited a moment to be sure John was done before saying, “And?” 

John gave him an exasperated look. “ _And…_ we should probably fix that, jackass. I like wearing clean clothes! Or—clothes cleaner than _these_ , anyway.” 

There was a point to his little outburst, Dave privately conceded. They hadn’t washed their clothes much since taking off because, well, how would they? He knew it was gross as hell but they’d found out the hard way that laundromats were _expensive_ as hell, and immediately decided Fuck That, Things Like That Can’t Really Be In The Budget. Dave didn’t care all that much. He’d thought John didn’t, either, but well, the man was always full of surprises. “Well, whaddayou wanna do about it?” Dave answered. “We don’t have any way to do anything about it.” 

“Or do we?” John smiled a little cleverly. Dave stared at him blankly, waiting for him to elaborate. John waited for Dave to put it together and, when that didn’t happen, suppressed a sigh. “We just need a bunch of water and some soap, Dave, put it together.”  
“Still lost.”

“The bathtub, man!” 

Dave looked at him like he was the biggest idiot around, which wasn’t often incorrect. “We… still don’t… have soap to wash them with…?”

“Oh, right.” John furrowed his brow, thinking, scrunching up his nose with the intensity of thought he was having to do. “Would bar soap work?” 

“I really doubt it.” He yawned. “If you’re gonna try that shit, do it on _your_ clothes, not mine. I’m gonna take a nap.” With that, he rolled over and settled in to sleep. 

John huffed quietly. He hadn’t really expected any help from Dave, who’d been slowly crashing for a few hours now, but he’d been hoping at least for apathetic endorsement, not the common sense Dave had dispensed. 

So after a little bit of deliberation and then something only a touch illegal, John chucked every article of clothing (except Amy’s sweater, he was pretty sure that was dry-clean-only or some shit, and besides, it was fine) he could get into the tub. He couldn’t get Dave to wake up, and he wasn’t about to try and peel the jacket off his back while he was sleeping because he quite liked keeping his face-bones in their current arrangement, so he just let the man be. After filling the tub with water up to what he guessed was an alright level, he fished the Tide Pod out of his pocket, stuck a knife in it, then squeezed all of the detergent into the tub. He really had no idea what he was doing, but he was doing it anyways, because that was just how he operated. He whistled to himself as he worked, cheerful as could be, while Dave snored away in the bed.

Eventually, though, Dave woke up and shuffled into the bathroom, puzzled by the light being on and yet the door being open, to find John sitting on his knees, in his underwear, stirring this bizarre clothes-soup with an entire arm, hair tied up to keep it out of the water as he leaned over. 

“What the fuck.” 

John twisted and grinned at him. “Hey, Dave! I found a way to wash our clothes. Oh— gimme your jacket so I can wash it.” 

“What?” Dave blinked at him blearily. 

“Your ja—”

“No.” Dave’s brain finally caught up with him. “Why the hell…?” 

“I told you, they fuckin’ reeked.” John turned his focus back to the tub. “I stole some detergent from the janitor closet. Really easy-to-pick lock. They should try harder.” Dave rubbed his face, slightly overwhelmed. “You _really should_ gimme that jacket, it smells.” 

“Sure, fine.” Dave sighed, shrugged it off, and chucked it at John’s back as he walked out of the bathroom to go right back to sleep. 

It was after he was finished washing the clothes, when he’d drained the now-dirty water and refilled the tub to rinse the remainder of the detergent off, that John suddenly realized he hadn’t thought this through properly. He had no idea where to dry these clothes. He wrung them out in the tub, then first hung them up on the shower rod, then chucked the towels into the sink to use the towel-racks, and then he spread a shirt or two over the back of the toilet, and finally he decided to raid the provided closet for clothes-hangers. 

When Dave next woke up, clothes were hung on random spots all around the room. The doorframe, the windowsill, in the closet, on the fucking _edge of the_ _decorative art_ , even. He sat up to see John sitting at the foot of the bed, watching more trashy reality TV. He glanced over when he heard Dave sit up and met his perplexed gaze with a, “We should invest in a clothesline.” 

“Fuckin’ hell, man.” Dave rubbed his face and then laughed just a little bit. “Did it even work?” 

“I mean, we’ll have to check and see if they’re all itchy with soap but, I think so.” John grinned. “They smell better, at least. I’m counting it a win.” 

“If you’ve made my own clothes all itchy I’m gonna kill you. We got any food?” 

“There’s a 7/11 in walking distance.” 

“Good enough.” 

John found out the hard way that just throwing a windbreaker on over his naked torso would not help him feel much less cold, but Dave couldn’t talk him out of going to pick out his own food, so he refused to entertain John’s whining about his own bad decisions as well. The plus side of it was that they got food out of the trip and once they got back to the room Dave didn’t care about John hogging all of the blankets in a vain attempt to warm up. He did, however, care when John decided that wasn’t enough and squished close enough to Dave that he was practically shoving the guy into the wall, trying to leech off his body heat. 

“Get off me, man, it’s not _my_ fault you’re this stupid,” Dave complained, gently pushing John, but not quite enough to get the guy off of him. For some reason, he felt like protesting a lot but not actually doing much for it. He wasn’t about to interrogate those reasons.

“Just lemme steal your body heat for a moment, jackass! You’ve got plenty of it!” John countered, leaning over onto him again. 

“You’re so goddamn annoying,” Dave huffed even as he relented, draping an arm over John’s shoulders. A beat passed, neither of the two acknowledging the current situation, before Dave spoke again. “We should probably get going soon, right?” 

John grumbled unintelligibly, hunching his shoulders, and Dave rolled his eyes. 

“We’re gonna have to head to the next case _sometime_.”

“Check-out isn’t ‘til noon.” 

Dave gave up. They watched shitty TV until closer to noon, at which point, Dave forcibly disentangled himself from John, ignored his whining about being cold (by answering it with a pillow to the face), and packed up their now-dry-or-mostly-dry clothes. “Come on. Time to go.” 

“Aw, alright,” John relented with a sigh. “Gimme a shirt at least.”

* * *

Driving was strangely exhausting, Dave had found. He hadn’t ever really liked doing it, exactly, but it never wore him out quite like this before. Then again, he hadn’t before had to do it for eight-or-so hours at a time, day-in and day-out. Fortunately they’d gotten another hotel room to wipe out in for the night and, after a paltry dinner of whatever they could afford at the nearest gas station, he promptly did just that, flopping facedown in the hotel bed and ignoring the show John was watching. Somehow, he wasn’t tired, despite the fact he’d been the one driving for the past seven hours, but Dave wasn’t about to ask how. He passed out in no time, ignoring the fact John’s elbow was digging into his side a little bit from the way he was leaning back on his arms.

Dave had hoped that one of the perks of this whole stupid mess would be that John would no longer be waking him up at odd hours of the morning with stupid calls and texts about  
Punch Zoos and cryptids that aren’t really cryptids, but no. Instead, now John had a more immediate access to Dave’s sleepy grumblings, and he’d sit up randomly in the middle of the night and nudge Dave awake to say something stupid. This was not a fact Dave was particularly thrilled about, but he’d weathered it, because, well, it was part of being friends with John, in his mind. But each time, his patience wore just a tad bit thinner, and he rarely, if ever, had much of it to begin with, even if he tended to give John and Amy both extra leeway.

It was something close to five in the morning. John had slept fitfully, uneasy, something not uncommon for him—for either of them—and he finally snapped awake for what was likely to be the last time in a slight bit of a sweaty panic. By default he immediately started to try and think of the stupidest thing possible, a little exercise he often did to try and distract himself when he wasn’t _too_ bad off but certainly on the road there. Dave snored beside him, like always, face pressed into the pillow, one arm hanging off the bed. It was a comforting sight. 

His brain finally connected the dots on an idea and he leaned over, gently taking hold of Dave’s soft flabby shoulder before shaking him most vigorously. “Dave, DaveDaveDaveDave, _Dave_. What if—” 

Dave had had enough. At this point he’d weathered this kind of nonsense for months, nearly every other night, and he couldn’t even hang up on John anymore because he was right there. There was no ‘shut up’ button, and no matter how much he pretended to still be asleep, John would just talk at him until he said something. It was driving him insane. He sat up on his elbow and leaned right into John’s face, for once startling him speechless, nose-to-nose with him. “John,” he growled, glaring directly into his eyes. “Shut. The fuck. Up. Dude. I’m trying. To **_sleep_** _!”_

John blinked at him. Dave glared for a moment longer and when John started to laugh in shock, he then flopped back down with an irritated groan. John tried to be quiet at first but even if he were deadly silent about it he was still shaking the bed. He laid back down and covered his mouth but he was still laughing and he couldn’t stop, not even when Dave reached over to gently swat him and grumble, “Go to sleep already, ya fuckin’ loon.”

“I’m sorry,” John managed between chuckles. “I’m sorry.” He was almost bordering on some kind of hysteria, still rattled from his nightmare and, now, from having a pissed-off Dave right in his face. Dave shifted a little, settling back down with a little sigh. John rolled onto his side, just barely snuggling up to Dave, and whispered, “You don’t _hate_ me, right?” 

Dave reached over again, this time just fumbling for a second before patting his shoulder gently. “No. You’re just real fuckin’ annoying.” 

“You sure?” 

There was a pause and John wondered if Dave had just fallen back asleep, or was ignoring him, but then he quietly said, in a voice already half-asleep, “M’sorry I snapped at you. Just tired.” His hand was still on John’s shoulder. 

“It’s fine.” John felt a little foolish for even asking. He knew he was annoying. He’d always been the one to toe the line between funny and obnoxious in the same way an elephant toes the line of a tightrope, which is to say, he really just trampled the line and relied on his charisma to save him if he fucked up.

At least Dave wouldn’t hate him. 

Right?


	7. What's It Matter Anymore?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: dissociation

It turned out nobody really wanted two random schmucks in their house around Christmastime, and work dried up for a solid week. If anyone had ghost or monster problems they were either putting them off until after the holiday or just handling it themselves, and if he were to be honest, Dave was starting to get antsy about it. He knew, logically, it was probably just the season or something—they’d never done this ‘professionally,’ they didn’t know the ups and downs of its specific economy—but he couldn’t shake a growing paranoia that it was all falling apart and they’d have to go find real jobs in some city. This wasn’t Undisclosed, this wasn’t a place he could just stroll in someplace and say “yeah, I know you probably think I’m fucking crazy, but I’ve got two hands that can stock shelves or whatever and I keep to myself and I won’t complain to _you_ about minimum wage, so hire me.” He didn’t have a resume and even if he did he knew it’d be unimpressive at best and downright terrible at worst. He wouldn't want to rely on John trying to make new connections here, either. The man always made as many enemies as he did friends, through what he’d claim was no fault of his own. Dave felt like the walls were closing in on him. He didn’t like it. 

They’d traveled further south, trying to escape the worst of the cold, but they hadn’t gotten out of it entirely. Neither of them was keen to go to fuckin’ Florida or anything; they were in lower Mississippi, someplace Dave hadn’t ever been before. Most places were places Dave hadn’t ever been before, though. They’d had their last case a town over, and would’ve just stayed there had John not alluded that they probably should leave, which was his way of saying he went out and got fucked-up and now owed somebody something and didn’t want them to come collect. He never gave Dave all the details, but Dave didn’t want them, anyways. 

“We don’t have enough to stay here any longer, anyway,” Dave said that morning. “And I don’t want to get kicked out or some shit for overstaying, either,” he added, before John could suggest it. 

John sighed, staring out the window. “How much d’we have?” 

“Not enough.” 

Silence settled. John chewed the inside of his lip. He knew Dave wasn’t restating that they couldn’t stay there, he meant they were damn near completely flat-broke again. John had never been smart with money and everything Dave had got taken, as far as he knew, so they were really, really in it now, with no savings or anything to fall back on. 

“Merry fuckin’ Christmas,” he said finally, joylessly, and Dave wanted to laugh but he really just couldn’t, staring at the wall. John sighed, did his best to be optimistic about it. “Well, we can always sleep in the car. I haven’t gotten anything from anyone yet. Hell, I’d even take something that seemed like bullshit, at this point.” 

The room was beige. Everything in it was some shade of brown. Dave tried not to contemplate why—was it for easy cleanup, or had it all been white or off-white at some point?—but he did look at the yellowy walls and the one lone framed painting that looked like a middle schooler did it. They were sitting down on the bed, on starched, scratchy sheets, TV on but nothing more than background noise, the room cold as hell with a broken A/C unit and ice creeping across the window, sort of vacantly staring around as they tended to do these days. The past few weeks even John had seemed subdued. They spent most days in silence save for conversations like these, conversations that never truly went anywhere and probably did as much good in communicating as just saying “I’m sad” at each other over and over again. 

“What are we gonna do?” He asked quietly. 

John finally looked at him. He thought for a moment. “Try our hardest, I guess.” He wanted to say something like _at least we have each other_ but he was pretty sure Dave wouldn’t’ve appreciated it right then. He took a deep breath and tried to find it in himself to say _we can do it_ but he really couldn’t. He needed to go out. He needed to get something, anything. Goddamned _anything_. But he couldn’t. He had no way to, and he wasn’t going to leave Dave alone right now. He could tell Dave was in a bad place, he didn’t want to come back to something awful. At least another perk of this was being able to put Dave on watch much, much easier. 

“I’m gonna call Amy,” Dave stated. Then he fished his phone out of his pocket. He wasn’t sure what he was going to be looking for—words of reassurance? A distraction? The comfort of her voice?—but it didn’t really matter anyways. 

“Want me to leave?” 

“Nah.” In fact, Dave promptly put his phone on speaker mode, just to make it clear he wanted John to stick around. John nodded silently, a little relieved. He’d started to worry that maybe the tensions between them were going to result in Dave pushing him as far out of his life as he could get while the two were tethered together like this; these days he always offered the guy a chance to get some space. For reasons neither of them could fathom, though, Dave had yet to take him up on it. 

The phone rang once… twice… 

“Hi, babe!” Amy sounded bright and happy as ever. “How are you?” 

“I’m fine. John’s here.” 

“I’m okay too!” John chimed in chipperly. 

“Hi, John! How is everything?” 

“Well,” he started lightly, “Still no cases, but we’re managing. It’s probably just the season. How are you? How’s college going?” 

“Everything’s fine!” She replied vaguely. “Just got done with finals and stuff, and, um, well I don’t know how they went just yet. Probably okay. Say, um… Most of my roommates are, like, going home for Christmas… so… you guys could come visit. If you wanted to.”

Dave paused and John glanced over at him, eyebrows raised a touch hopefully. “…Maybe.” 

“Yeah, we’ll see if we’d be able to make it up there,” John added, already knowing Dave was likely going to find or fabricate a reason for them to be unable. He wasn’t sure why, but he had a couple guesses, a few of which he couldn't really grudge the guy for. He'd just have to gently needle away at Dave’s resolve to not have a good time—to be honest, John missed Amy too, at this point. 

“It’d be lovely to see you,” she gently pressed. “They’ll be back by New Years, but maybe you two could, I don’t know, crash on the couch? Maybe they wouldn’t mind.” 

Dave actually cracked just the barest of smiles, gone in an instant before he gently said, “Alright, babe, we’ll think about it.”

“You better,” she replied lightly. “I’ll ask them about it. For sure.”

The conversation grew more aimless from there; Amy had missed hearing their voices just as much as they’d missed hearing hers. So they talked about as many things as they possibly could, exhausting every single topic until eventually they had to admit there was nothing left to speak of. It was late where Amy was, anyways, and she had classes tomorrow, so they grudgingly said their goodbyes and hung up.

After the call, Dave stared at the wall with that uncomfortably distant gaze he often got these days. John wanted to press for what was bothering him but he was sure he already knew, and couldn’t help. He could do nothing but watch TV as Dave sat at the foot of the bed, statuesque, barely even blinking. He kept an eye on Dave, though. Not like he thought anything would happen, per se, he was just still worried. His ‘protect Dave from himself’ instincts were being tripped by this whole situation, all the time now, and who could blame him? He was feeling pretty low, himself. And he didn’t have enough money for distractions for once, which felt like a death sentence in and of itself. If he weren’t trying to avoid somebody right now, he’d likely have still gone out, though. He wasn’t sure if he should hate himself for that.

Eventually, he shut the TV off and sat up a little. Dave reacted after a moment or two, glancing over. “We should go to bed,” John remarked. 

“I won’t be able to sleep,” Dave answered vacantly. 

“Try anyways,” John nudged. Dave didn’t answer, nor did he move, and John sighed. “Well, _I’m_ gonna go to bed,” he continued, settling in for the night. Dave turned back to the wall. John still kept an eye on him, only dozing lightly for a bit until he realized two things: one, the sun was rising and two, Dave had hardly moved an inch. He sat back up, rubbing a hand over his face with a grimace before dropping it with a slight sigh. “Dude, are you okay?”

Dave took a moment to answer. “Yeah.” 

He was clearly lying, but there was no way John would be able to pry the truth out of him without a little bloodshed, so he elected not to. He stared warily at Dave, trying to puzzle it out on his own. The guy was typically pretty hard-to-read, but John could do it, sometimes, just for having known him for so very long by now, yet right now he just seemed like a brick wall. Moreso than usual. “Alright,” he replied, in a tone that very heavily implied he didn’t believe Dave, but it got no reaction. He sighed for the third time that night but technically the second time of the morning, and ran a hand across his face again like he could massage an idea out of his forehead. He wanted to help. He didn’t know how to help. He was too tired and run-down to think of how to help. It hurt. “We should get going again. I can’t sleep either,” he lied quietly. 

There was another 2-5 business minutes as Dave processed before replying, “Alright.”

* * *

John drove, because he didn’t quite trust a zoned-out Dave to drive, and they were quiet the whole time, barely talking. Dave wasn’t present enough to notice it but the silence between them was starting to really get under John’s skin, and he started drumming the steering wheel with his fingers, feeling an almost nervous energy thrumming in his muscles. This wasn’t right. He and Dave weren’t supposed to be this goddamn strung-out and they for sure weren’t supposed to be this _quiet_. He wanted the lighthearted banter back. He wanted to have the mental capacity to make dick jokes again but he found it frustratingly hard to think through this kind of fog. Short bursts of insane stressful situations, sure, he could come up with a billion jokes—the adrenaline helped—but in this kind of long-term slow-cooker-pressure type of situation he just got burnt-out and afraid all over again. He hated it. It was too familiar and he _hated_ it. 

He closed his eyes for a second, tried for a silent deep breath, and gripped the steering wheel hard to keep from continuing his light abuse of it. It had become a nervous tic at this point, something he did often enough that some days he’d realize he had little bruises on the sides of his fingers from repeatedly slamming them into the unforgiving material of the steering wheel. 

The sky was grey. It had been raining here—too far south for snow, John supposed, despite the unnatural cold snap this part of the country had had the past week—and that made everything just all varying shades of grey, the sky hazy with rain at times and just hazy in general when it wasn’t raining. It was hard for John _not_ to get bummed-out over it. He missed the sun. He missed feeling warm without piling on eight different layers (or trying to get close enough to Dave to steal his warmth without the guy noticing). He clung to the idea that things would get better soon, that it would get warmer, spring would come and everything would be fine again. And now they knew that, prior to the Christmas season, they needed to save up some money to avoid having to sleep in the car. He hoped that, next year, they’d be able to do that, and maybe it’d keep Dave from another downward spiral. 

If there _was_ a ‘next year.’

He didn’t like thinking about that, so he decided against it. They’d talked for quite some time on where to go next, eventually deciding that, while someplace like Florida would be much nicer and warmer, it’d likely be too expensive. They were heading more westward, hoping to find some semblance of warmth in Texas, but they weren’t too hopeful of that. It was strange to be moving with no real destination in mind; while John wasn’t the kind of guy to hesitate on much of anything, ever, he was just a little wary of running out of gas. The last thing they needed was to be broke and stranded, after all. His fingers twitched on the steering wheel. Thinking about it made him anxious, not for the potential danger of it but because he knew if it was his fault Dave would get pretty pissed with him. He wanted to smoke but didn’t want to roll down the window, plus he was on his last pack of cigarettes and trying to ration them out. He didn’t want to run out and be having to deal with nicotine withdrawals on top of everything else. 

Dave ‘woke up’ slowly. He finally moved about an hour or two into John driving, turning to look out the windshield instead of the side window, moving stiffly as he rubbed his neck. He spoke up an hour after that to ask John how far they’d gotten, and if they could take a bathroom break. Getting up and walking around at a rest stop seemed to bring him mostly back into his body. He leaned against a vending machine as John poked through its options, eventually settling on a Sprite. “Any Mountain Dew?” He asked absently. 

“Out of order,” John replied with a touch of empathy, straightening up with a bottle in-hand now. “Sorry, man.” 

Dave grunted, fishing around in his pockets for some change. He hadn’t eaten yet today and he was starting to get that lightheaded feeling he always got when it’d been just a bit too long. Maybe a Snickers bar or something would stave it off for a bit. John took a gulp of his Sprite, then grimaced as the cold froze his teeth, hissing in pain. Dave glanced over in mild amusement as John clapped a hand over his mouth, mumbling “Cold, cold, cold,” over and over again. 

Dave thumbed the numbers for the Snickers bar. “You gonna make it, dude?”

“That shit hurted,” John wheezed. “Fuck. Ow.”

The bar thunked into the little door on the machine and Dave picked it up, ignoring the mysterious griminess of the hatch. “Let’s get back to the car, it’s too goddamned cold out here.” 

“Don’t gotta tell me twice.”

Snow crunched unsteadily under their sneakers and Dave grimaced, feeling water seep into his right sock. There was a hole somewhere in his shoe, had been for a little while now, but he couldn’t actually figure out where it was. Somewhere near the heel, he could feel that much, but when he tried to look he couldn’t find it. It was driving him nuts. He shook his foot off as much as he could when they reached the car; they’d already agreed they’d trade off who was driving, so Dave would, actually, need his right foot to function and not be all wet and gross. They settled into the not-much-warmer-but-still-it-counted car and Dave held out the Snickers bar. “Want some?”

“Sure.” 

Dave took the opportunity to check over John’s vague, scribbled notes, make sure he was heading to the right place. Again they had only a vague notion of where they were headed, but he had to be sure he wouldn’t fuck up and take the wrong exit, end up somewhere they weren’t aiming for. John handed the bar back after just taking one small bite, pressing it into Dave’s hand, and Dave wasn’t really paying attention enough to notice that. “Think we’ll get there before sundown?”

“Maybe.” John shrugged. “Wouldn’t worry about it.” 

Dave grunted and started the engine again. 

* * *

They stopped for gas long after sundown, which felt like late in the evening due to the sheer darkness but was really only someplace around ten-thirty. Dave had decided that eating a single Snickers bar was fine for an entire day—they weren’t really doing anything, just driving, he didn’t feel he’d earned it and hey, not eating saved money. Not like he couldn’t stand to lose a little weight, anyways. John, however, wanted to get some food, so he’d gone inside while Dave was filling the car back up, and he’d been gone for a short while now, long enough Dave was starting to get just a little impatient, sitting around waiting for him. They really should get going, after all. 

The passenger door swung open, and the car dinged rhythmically to let them know that there was, indeed, a door open, a sound that cut abruptly when John slammed the door behind him and thumped a bit of snow off his shoes onto the floormat. Dave didn’t glance over until something bumped into his elbow and he reflexively lifted his arm closer to his chest, looking over in confusion. John was prodding him with a bottle of Mountain Dew: Code Red. They’d had an oddly tough time finding it lately so Dave was actually quite surprised to see it. John grinned at him and pulled a second one from the sleeve of his jacket. Dave would’ve marveled at the skill with which he did so if he didn’t know that kind of bullshit was what got him banned from Undisclosed’s only Target. John put the second one in the cupholder before pulling a bag of chips out from his waistband and settling in to eat them as Dave started the engine again. It was really sweet of John to do that, to steal not just one bottle of Code Red but two. Though neither of them said anything, John knew Dave appreciated it greatly. 

“Where’re we gonna sleep?” John asked innocuously as the engine started again. 

“Wherever seems least-likely for us to get stabbed.” 

John nodded, suppressed a yawn. They’d probably still be going for a few hours, but he was starting to get tired already and, at this point, questioned the wisdom of them both being awake at the same time when they didn’t have a place to crash where they could both sleep. After a couple minutes of thinking about that he realized it might be a real problem and spoke up on it. That of course turned into a somewhat-awkward conversation about how, exactly, the mechanics of sleeping in this car and not freezing to death were going to work, which proved to be a bit of a head-scratcher until John jokingly suggested he’d sleep on top of Dave for the sake of mutual warmth.

“Why do _I_ have to get crushed by your bony ass?” Dave shot him a sideways look, annoyed.

“Well, I’m not about to get _flattened_ by you,” John replied lightheartedly, “so yeah, you first.”

“Fine,” Dave relented with a roll of his eyes. 

There was a pause wherein John processed what Dave said, then, upon realizing, blurted, “Wait, forreal?” 

Dave gave him a confused look. “Well, yeah, I guess. It’s cold as balls and there’s nowhere for us to go.” He sounded less certain the more he spoke; he hadn’t picked up on it being a joke and now he felt a little bit self-conscious. He wasn’t sure if saying it wasn’t gay would make it seem gay so he just stopped talking, but he was definitely worrying over whether or not it did, in fact, seem gay.

John, for once, couldn’t figure out what to say either, for some very similar reasons, so he just shrugged and said a quiet “alright” before falling silent again. 

About fifteen minutes later, Dave was starting to lose it a little, tired enough that his eyelids were drooping and he was starting to feel like falling asleep at the wheel. “I gotta call it a night, man,” he said finally.

John, who’d already been dozing off next to him, snapped awake at the sudden sound of his voice and said, “Yeah?” 

“Yeah.” He pulled over far enough off the road that they wouldn’t likely get hit, thumbed the hazard light button, threw the car into park and cut the engine. They settled in with the least amount of talking possible, until, once they were both lying down, Dave spoke up again. 

“John?” 

John stirred, lifting his head slightly to look up at Dave before realizing he’d have to snap his neck to actually see his face and promptly giving up. “Hm?”

“You ever speak to anybody about this, I’ll wring your neck.” Dave growled solemnly. 

John laughed. “Can’t you just say ‘no homo’ like a normal dude?” 

“I mean it.”

“Sure, fine.” He couldn’t have sounded any more insincere if he tried, but Dave dropped the subject anyways, already embarrassed and tired and trying not to think about it. 

They slept very restlessly. It might’ve been the worst sleep Dave had so far, as it turned out the price of not freezing to death was John’s bony shoulders and elbows and really just the entirety of his jagged-edged frame pressing into Dave (as he’d suspected would be the case). He was only a little bitter about it, about the fact that this was likely a better experience for John than for him. There wasn’t enough space, Dave’s back cramped up almost immediately, but eventually his exhaustion outweighed the discomfort and he finally fell asleep only to wake up when John elbowed him in the gut while trying to get more comfortable. It all sucked. 

John, for his part, didn’t exactly have much better a time of it. While Dave was soft and warm he was also prone to flinching in his sleep, jolting John awake every time, and there wasn’t any room at all. He knew he was probably very, very uncomfortable to be crushed by, but they couldn't do much for it; even though they were huddled together virtually as close as they possibly could be, John still shivered throughout most of the night. He was almost glad when Dave woke up a short bit after the sun rose and ended up waking John up so they could get going again. He elected to drive, letting John keep sleeping in the passenger seat, and they mutually agreed that sleeping in shifts would be better than trying that again. 

John couldn’t deny being just a little disappointed.


End file.
